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fiimage. 

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d'impression  ou  d'illustration,  soit  par  Ie  second 
plat,  salon  Ie  caa.  Tous  les  autrea  exemplaires 
originaux  sont  filmAs  en  commandant  par  la 
premiere  page  qui  comporte  uie  empreinte 
d'impression  ou  d'illustration  et  en  terminant  par 
la  derniAre  page  qui  comporte  une  telle 
empreinte. 

Un  de*  symboles  suivants  apparaitra  sur  la 
derniire  image  de  cheque  microfiche,  selon  Ie 
cas:  Ie  symbols  — ^  signifie  "A  SUIVRE ",  Ie 
symbols  V  signifie  "FIN". 

Les  cartas,  planches,  tableaux,  etc..  peuvent  etre 
filmAs  i  des  taux  de  reduction  diff^rents. 
Lorsque  Ie  document  est  trop  grand  pour  etre 
reproduit  en  un  seul  clich«,  il  est  film*  d  partir 
de  I'angle  supirieur  gauche,  de  gauche  i  droite. 
et  de  haut  en  bas,  en  prenant  Ie  nombre 
d'images  nicessaire.  Les  diagrammes  suivants 
illustrent  la  mAthode. 


1 

2 

3 

1 

2 

3 

4 

5 

6 

MICROCOPY    RESOLUTION   TEST   CHART 

(AKSI  and  ISO  TEST  CHART  No    2) 


A  APPLIED  IfVMGE     Inc 

^Sr  1653   East    Ma.n    Street 

5^S  Rochester.    New   York         '4609       USA 

'^S  (716)    482  -  0300  -  Plione 

^^  (716)   288  -  5989  -  Fax 


mmm 


RECONSTRUCTION 
AND  NATIONAL  LIFE 


'^^^y^' 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

MBW  YOSK  •   BOSTON  •  CHICAGO  •  DALLAS 
ATLANTA  •   SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limrbd 

LONDON  .   BOMBAY  •   CALCUTTA 
MBLBOtntNK 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ln. 


RECONSTRUCTION 
AND  NATIONAL  LIFE 


BY 
CECIL  FAIRFIELD  LAVELL,  Ph.D. 

(COLUMBIA) 

Auociate  Profeuor  of  History,  Grinnell  College 


THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1919 


A.U  righU  rtttrvtd 


'.  f 


^1  XO.X 

COPTEIOHT,  1919 

By  the  1L\CM1LLAN  COMPINY 
Bet  up  and  electrotyped.     Published,  April,  19i» 


FOREWORD 


Reconstruction  is  not,  to  an  American,  a  word  of 
the  happiest  associations.     To  even  a  superficial  stu- 
dent of  American  history  it  means  one  episode  and  one 
only,  an  episode  to  which  no  southerner  can  yet  refer 
without  heightened  color,  no  northerner  without  dis- 
comfort.    But  we  do  not  recall  such  a  memory  to  pro- 
mote pessimism  —  only  to  remind  ourselves  that  it  was 
reconstruction  of  the  South  by  the  North  that  failed 
and  that  proved  more  destructive  than  the  war  itself. 
The  reconstruction  that  succeeded  was  undertaken  by 
the  South  and  was  carried  through  in  spite  of  all  handi- 
caps.    And  the  reminder  may  help  us  to  estimate  the 
permanent  and  the  passing,  the  fundamental  and  the 
external  in  the  Europe  of  1919.     For  it  may  be  that 
some  of  us  watch  too  exclusively  the  labors  of  the  Con- 
gress  at  Paris  and  ignore  the  pathetic  and  powerful 
struggles  of  the  people  of  Europe  for  security,  free- 
dom and  self-realization. 

The  problem  of  reconstruction  may  oe  approached 
from  two  angles.  One  phase  of  it  is  necessarily  some- 
what formal  and  external.     Wounds  have  to  be  healed, 


VI  FOREWORD 

deformities  have  to  be  removed,  frontiers  have  to  be 
redrawn  along  national  lines,  rival  claims  have  to  be 
considered  where  nationality  is  mixed  or  doubtful,  new 
states  that  were  formerly  parts  of  the  German,  Aus- 
tro-Hungarian  or  Russian  Empires  have  to  be  delim- 
ited and  recognized,  and  form  must  be  given  to  the 
League  of  Nations.  The  other  phase  is  even  more 
complex  and  fu.idamental.  It  involves  the  renewal  of 
normal  lines  of  life  and  progress  by  all  the  nations  in- 
volved in  the  war,  the  picking  up  of  strained  and 
broken  threads,  the  reconsideration  by  each  people  of 
its  own  problems  after  the  tremendous  crisis  that  is 
now  past. 

The  formal,  diplomatic  phase  is  the  one  that  pri- 
marily concerns  the  Peace  Congress  at  Versailles.  Its 
difficulties  are  in  theory  not  particularly  formidable, 
for  the  most  part,  for  the  settlement  must  proceed  on 
principles  universally  admitted.  The  practical  diffi- 
culties, on  the  other  hand,  are  enormous,  and  can  be 
removed  only  by  a  minute  knowledge  of  the  facts  and 
by  infinite  tact.  But  however  carefully  we  may  en- 
deavor to  follow  and  understand  this  external  side  of 
reconstruction  we  are  in  the  main  powerless  to  aid  or 
hinder.  All  we  can  do  is  to  clarify  the  issues  in  our 
mmds  and  try  to  grasp  the  most  essential  facts. 

The  more  subtle  and  far-reaching  phase  of  recon- 


FOREWORD 


VU 


struction  is  that  implied  in  self-determination,  the 
problem  imposed  on  each  people  of  facing  its  own  is- 
sues, reconsidering  its  own  aims  and  lines  of  advance. 
In  this  we  cannot  always  give  mutual  aid  in  a  direct 
and  material  way,  but  we  can  aid  in  sympathy  and  un- 
derstanding. And  if  this  kind  of  aid,  intangible,  spir- 
itual, immensely  powerful,  is  to  be  rendered  intelli- 
gently we  must  above  all  things  try  to  know  the  char- 
acter and  the  problems  of  the  peoples  with  whom  we 
are  to  be  associated  in  our  League  of  Nations.  For 
whatever  form  the  League  may  take  and  however  that 
League  may  be  modified  in  the  years  to  come  it  will 
stand  or  fall  not  mainly  through  formal  merits  or  for- 
mal weaknesses  but  through  the  degree  to  which  it  suc- 
ceeds in  "  organizing  the  friendship  of  the  world." 

It  is  this  latter  phase  of  reconstruction  that  I  have 
had  chiefly  in  mind  in  the  chapters  that  follow.  They 
rest  on  the  conviction  that  important  as  the  formal  work 
of  the  Peace  Congress  may  be  there  is  a  more  funda- 
mental and  permanent  work  of  reconstruction  i.<i- 
must  fall  on  each  nation,  not  a  reconstruction  that  will 
be  built  on  the  deceptively  tangible  foundation  of  maps 
and  treaties  but  a  reconstruction  built  on  the  hopes, 
the  convictions,  the  struggles,  the  dreams  of  the  peo- 
ples. The  basis  of  such  reconstruction  is  not  to  be 
found  in  documents  or  institutions,  for  it  is  a  living 


VI 11 


FOREWORD 


and  dynamic  basis,  and  the  structure  will  not  be  one 
that  may  be  completed  in  a  year;  its  foundations  have 
been  shaping  for  centuries,  and  none  of  us  will  live 
to  see  the  work  receive  its  final  touch.     But  in  the 
meantime  we  may  aid  in  the  building  by  knowledge, 
sympathy  and  good-will.     And  our  first  step  must  b^ 
the  study  of  the  foundations  on  which  the  anxious  and 
wearied  peoples  of  Europe  are  to  build,  the  solid  and 
yet  ever  changing  foundations  of  human  life  in  its 
struggle  toward  a  social  ideal. 

Of  the  need  for  such  a  study  we  are  earnestly  con- 
vmced.     For  the  isolation  of  the  United  States  is 
broken,  and  apparently  broken  forever.     The  Atlantic 
has  been  bridged,  or  rather  it  has  become  to  America 
what  the  Channel  has  been  to  England  for  a  thousand 
years.     It  still  separates  us  from  Europe,  but  we  no 
longer  have  the  illusion  that  the  troubles  of  Europe 
are  the  troubles  of  another  planet.     It  was  always  an 
Illusion.     There  was  never  a  time  when  the  affairs 
of  peoples  so  closely  akin  to  us  in  blood,  in  traditions 
and  in  thought  did  not  matter  to  us.     Not  only  has  the 
stream  of  immigration  never  stopped,  not  only  have 
all  of  us  friends  or  relatives  who  were  born  in  Britain, 
Germany,  France,  Italy,  Russia  and  the  remotest  cor^ 
ners  of  the  older  world,  but  our  reading  and  thinking 
of  every  day  brings  us  into  touch  with  the  lands  and 


FOREWORD 


IX 


peoples  across  the  sea.  We  were  all  really  aware  of 
this  before  the  war.  But  the  old  condescension  of  Eu- 
rope toward  America  had  been  replaced  by  a  more 
arrogant  condescension  of  America  toward  Europe, 
and  we  assumed  an  attitude  of  lofty  remoteness,  an 
attitude  born  of  conviction  both  of  security  and  of 
superiority.  That  attitude,  we  may  hope,  is  gone  for- 
ever. And  now  it  is  necessary  to  turn  with  frank  in- 
quiry and  with  sympathy  to  the  effort  to  understand 
our  overseas  kindred  whose  tragedies  we  have  in  some 
measure  made  our  own.  It  is  not  enough  to  have 
American  representatives  in  the  Peace  Congress  or  to 
send  Commissions.  Each  of  us  must  try  to  clear  away 
the  fog  of  ignorance  and  prejudice  that  blinds  our 
eyes,  and  to  understand  the  problems  that  Europe  has 
been  facing  in  past  years  and  is  facing  still.  For  we 
at  last  see  that  those  problems  are  our  own,  and  that  in 
the  burden  of  their  solution  we  must  bear  our  share. 

To  this  effort  toward  the  understanding  of  the  living 
basis  of  Europe's  problem  of  reconstruction  I  have 
contributed  only  an  introductory  survey,  hardly  more 
indeed  than  the  statement  and  illustration  of  a  point 
of  view.  To  this  end  the  scope  of  the  book  has  been 
limited,  except  for  the  first  chapter,  to  the  study  of 
four  peoples,  the  French,  the  German,  the  Russian, 
and  the  British.     A  bibliography  has  seemed  hardly 


^  FOREWORD 

necessary,  but  the  student  will  find  it  advisable  to  have 
within  reach  any  good  history  of  modem  Europe,  such 
as  Hayes,  Political  and  Social  History  of  Modem 
Europe  (Macmillan,  1917),  or  Schapiro,  Modern  and 
Contemporary  European  History  (Houghton  Mifflin, 
1918).  And  he  will  find  constant  stimulus  and  help 
in  Arnold  Toynbee's  two  books,  Nationality  and  the 
War  and  The  New  Europe  (Dent,  London,  and  E.  P. 
Button,  New  York,  1915-6). 

C.  F.  L. 

Grinnell,  Iowa, 

March  10,  1919. 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 


PAGE 
V 


Foreword 

I    The  Pkoblem:  Europe's  Unsettled  Questions  i 

II    Revolution  and  Readjustment  in  France  .     .  17 

III  The  French  Revolution  and  National  Life  .  37 

IV  The  Basis  of  Reconstruction  in  Germany      .  56 

V    Idealism  in  German  Politics 74 

VI    The  Russians  and  the  Dawn  of  Russian  Free- 
dom       92 

VII    The  Russian  Problem  and  the  Revolution     .  114 

VIII    British  Liberty  AN  J  THE  Empire 141 

IX    The  New  Idealism  in  England 165 

Afterword:  Nationalism  and  International- 
ism        182 


a 
1 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND 
NATIONAL  LIFE 


The  Problem  :    Europe's  Unsettled 
Questions. 

The  student  who  is  seeking  for  some  basis  for  the 
reconstruction  of  Europe  in  the  history  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  will  find  the  grouping  of  his  facts  con- 
trolled mainly  by  four  great  phenomena  —  the  growth 
of  nationality,  the  growth  of  democracy,  the  expan- 
sion of  Europe,  and  the  industrial  revolution.  None 
of  these,  with  the  exception  of  the  last,  were  of  recent 
origin.  The  expansion  of  Europe  began  four  hun- 
dred years  ago  with  Columbus  and  Vasco  da  Gama, 
and  before  the  end  of  the  .eighteenth  century  North 
and  South  America  were  already  committed  to  the 
domination  of  peoples  of  European  stock,  the  British 
were  masters  of  a  large  part  of  India,  and  the  Russian 
Empire  reached  a  long  arm  across  Siberia  to  the  Pa- 
cific.    Similarly,  nationality  and  democracy  are  not 


2  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

new  ideas :  Swiss,  Dutch,  and  English  patriots  fought 
for  their  country  centuries  ago,  and  both  national  feel- 
ing and  the  idea  of  government  by  the  people  go  back 
at  least  as  far  as  Marathon  and  the  Athenian  demos. 

But  the  nineteentli  century  saw  "  imperialism  "  as- 
sume a  new  and  tremendous   significance  with  the 
completion  of  the  British  conquest  of  India,  the  Rus- 
sian advance  into  central  Asia,  the  colonization  of 
Australasia,  the  partition  of  Africa,  and  the  rapid 
rise  of  the  overseas  dominions  to  wealth  and  power. 
At  the  same  time  nationality  and  democracy  have  come 
to  have  a  force  and  significance  in  the  world  since  the 
French  Revolution  that  they  had  never  had  before; 
naiions  have  moved   toward   self -consciousness  and 
freedom  on  a  mighty  and  unprecedented  scale  until 
they  have  quite  displaced  the  monarchs  of  a  century 
ago  In  the  sovereignty  of  Europe.     And  the  industrial 
revolution  is  quite  narrowly  and  definitely  modern. 
It  began  in  the  eighteenth  century,  and  since  James 
Watt  drew  out  his  first  patent  in  1769  mechanical  sci- 
ence, stean  and  electricity  have  changed  the  face  of 
the  world. 

All  of  these  phenomena  have  brought  with  them  po- 
tent forces  of  change  and  upheaval.  With  them  have 
come  new  visions,  new  aspirations  and  fierce  enthu- 
siasms. On  the  whole,  no  doubt,  they  have  worked 
good  rather  than  evil,  but  the  one  certainty  is  that  they 


EUROPE  S   UNSETTLED   QUESTIONS 


have  wrought  havoc  with  old  standards  and  cM  tradi- 
tions, that  they  made  possible  the  great  war,  and  that 
they  Will  quite  largely  dominate  the  process  of  recon- 
struction. Morec  er  —  and  the  understanding  of  this 
is  fundamental  —  they  have  nothing  like  reached 
completion.  For  an  old  social  and  political  system 
dies  slowly,  and  if  it  is  true  in  a  sense  that  the  world 
is  in  a  perpetual  process  of  death  and  re-birth  there  are 
some  periods  —  and  the  nineteenth  century  was  one 
of  them  —  when  the  process  is  peculiarly  far-reaching 
and  convulsive;  the  old  stubbornly  resisting  dissolu- 
tion, the  new  persistently  asserting  its  claims.  When 
the  twentieth  century  opened  it  saw  the  states  of 
Europe  still  imperfectly  adjusted  to  any  of  the  new 
ideas  that  were  every  year  growing  more  insistent, 
more  certain  of  ultimate  victory.  Nationality  partly 
coincided  with  state  frontiers  —  but  not  wholly.  The 
peoples  were  steadily  moving  toward  control  of  their 
governments,  but  they  were  still  far  from  the  goal  of 
a  democratic  Europe.  Expansion  had  brought  power, 
wealth,  a  widened  horizon,  and  had  brought  also  for- 
midable problems  of  government,  terrible  possibilities 
of  jealousy,  rivalry  and  arrogance.  The  industrial 
revolution  had  given  the  world  incredible  increase  in 
production,  miraculous  means  of  communication  and 
transportation,  with  the  factory  system,  the  centraliza- 
tion of  industry,  the  conflict  between  labor  and  capital, 


i' 


4  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL  LIFE 

the  appearance  of  anarchism  and  socialism.  The  old 
regime  was  dying,  perhaps,  but  it  was  not  dead,  and  it 
clung  obstinately  to  life.  The  new  regime  was  fast 
learning  and  asserting  its  powers,  but  its  victory  was 
not  yet  final  and  its  constructive  aims  were  undeter- 
mined, still  in  controversy. 

For  the  widespread  and  growing  conviction  that  the 
future  belonged  to  the  peoples,  not  to  kings,  nobles, 
aristocracies,  was  far  from  settling  the  question. 
"  People  "  is  a  vague  word.  It  by  no  means  stood  for 
a  clear  and  homogeneous  fact.  The  victory  of  na- 
tionality and  democracy  was  postponed  while  classes 
and  sections  wrangled  over  details.  The  political  lib- 
erty that  was  almost  won  was  declared  to  be  valueless 
without  economic  liberty.  And  the  millions  of  men 
and  women  between  the  Atlantic  Ocean  and  the  Ural 
Hills  seethed  in  uneasy  life,  unsure  of  their  desires  and 
their  powers,  sure  only  of  a  light  that  might  dazzle 
but  was  still  a  light,  a  freedom  that  might  bewilder 
and  intoxicate  but  was  still  freedom,  an  ideal  that 
might  have  a  tantalizing  way  of  assuming  a  myriad 
changing  forms,  but  yet  held  the  promise  of  a  golden 
age. 

I.  Let  us  consider  the  force  of  nationality  first.  In 
the  course  of  the  nineteenth  century  Italy  and  Ger- 
many, from  being  "  geographical  expressions  "  became 


EUROPE  S    UNSETTLED  QUESTIONS 


united  and  highly  conscious  states,  inspired  by  a  na- 
tional feeling  that  was  quite  new,  that  had  been  non- 
existent when  the  French  Revolution  began,  but  that 
was  fervent  and  apparently  deep-seated.     France  had 
had  many  of  the  elements  of  national  life  under  the 
Bourbon  kings,  but  they  wee  fused  by  the  Revolution 
into  a  sentiment  of  new  and  tremendous  power.     Eng- 
land, Scotland,  Wales  and  —  more  doubtfully  —  Ire- 
land, in  their  slowly  cementing  partnership,  felt  no 
sudden  change,  but  even  British  nationality  acquired 
a  fresh  vigor  and  clearness  of  conviction,  and  the 
spread  of  national  consciousness  through  the  British 
dominions  overseas  meant  a  significant  widening  of 
the  whole  idea  as  the  same  imperial  patriotism  showed 
itself  in  Melbourne,  Winnipeg,  Auckland  and  Cape 
Town.     To  Italy,  Germany,  France  and  the  British 
Empire  we  may  add  all  of  the  smaller  states  of  Europe, 
not  least  those  that  had  broken  loose  from  the  Turkish 
Empire  only  a  few  generations  ago.     In  all,  the  theory 
of  nationality,  vague  and  sometimes  ill-defined  as  it 
might  be,  was  held  with  conviction;  in  all,  state  and 
nation,  political  and  national  boundaries,  were  sup- 
posed to  coincide. 

But  this  theory  by  no  means  corresponded  with  fact. 
Russia  and  Austro-Hungary  were  the  most  conspicu- 
ous cases  in  point.     Within  their  boundaries  there  was 


u 


6  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

national  sentiment,  but  it  was  divided  and  had  little  re- 
lation to  government  or  boundaries.  And  even  within 
the  limits  of  the  countries  most  strongly  moved  and 
controlled  by  the  national  spirit  there  were  incon- 
sistencies and  diverse  elements  that  boded  trouble. 
Italy  felt  that  she  was  incomplete  without  the  Tren- 
tino.  France  after  1871  mourned  the  loss  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine,  Denmark  the  loss  of  Danish  Schleswig. 
Within  the  German  Empire  were  Poles,  Danes  and 
Frenchmen  who  passionately  resented  their  inclusion 
in  a  political  unit  with  which  they  felt  no  national  bond. 
Even  Great  Britain  had  discomfort  in  the  problem  of 
Ireland.  And  the  Balkan  states  surveyed  their  ar- 
rangement on  the  map  with  an  indignant  sense  that 
their  bounds  had  been  set  with  no  regard  whatever 
to  nationality,  that  the  whole  peninsula  woul''  have 
to  be  re-divided  before  they  could  be  at  rest. 

From  the  poini  of  view  of  nationality,  then,  we  can 
easily  distinguish  on  the  map  of  Europe  certain 
"  sore  points,"  as  it  were  —  centers  of  unrest  that 
might  or  might  not  provoke  wars  but  certainly  mer- 
ited consideration  and  would  threaten  the  world's  peace 
until  they  were  settled.  They  were  all  relics  of  the  old 
.iplon.  icy.  The  Trentino  had  "belonged"  to  Aus- 
tria long  before  Italian  unity  was  dreamed  of,  and  it 
remained  unredeemed.     Poland  had  been  divided  to 


EUROPE  S    UNSETTLED  QUESTIONS 


to 


suit  the  convenience  of  Austria,  Prussia  and  Russia, 
the  consideration  of  nationality  entering  not  at  all  into 
the  calculations  of  the  rulers  who  effected  the  parti- 
tion. Alsace-Lorraine  and  Schleswig  were  annexed 
to  the  German  Empire  for  state  reasons  and  by  mil- 
itary force.  Ireland  had  been  conquered  by  England 
ages  ago,  had  been  semi-anglicized,  and  now  proved 
difficult  of  national  assimilation  even  when  given  free- 
dom and  full  partnership.  And  the  Balkan  prob- 
lems were  problems  resulting  from  work  half  done 
by  the  diplomats  of  the  Great  Powers,  from  the  sullen 
restiveness  of  nations  half  given  national  existence 
and  grudgingly  left  incomplete.  There  was  an  un- 
redeemed Serbia  in  the  Austrian  province  of  Bosnia, 
an  unredeemed  Roumania  in  the  Austrian  province  of 
Transylvania  and  in  the  Russian  province  of  Bessar- 
abia, an  unredeemed  Greece  and  Bulgaria  in  Mace- 
donia, just  as  there  was  an  unredeemed  France,  an 
unredeemed  Denmark,  an  unredeemed  Italy,  an  unre- 
deemed Poland.  And  all  of  these  meant  restlessness, 
agitation,  bitterness,  the  threat  of  war. 

2.  The  incomplete  realization  of  democracy  was  a 
menace  second  only  to  that  springing  from  incomplete 
or  thwarted  nationality.  Here  Britain  (including  Ire- 
land, of  course,  for  the  Irish  have  for  years  been  as 
free  as  the  English  or  the  Scotch),  France,  Italy,  Hoi- 


u 


8 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


land,  Belgium,  Switzerland,  the  Scandinavian  and  the 
Balkan  states  may  be  left  out  of  consideration.    Not 
all  had  achieved  complete  democracy,  but  democracy 
was  steadily  moving  toward  realization  with  the  goal 
in  sight  and  no  considerable  obstacles  in  the  way. 
As  far  as  freedom  and  self-government  were  con- 
cerned these  states  presented  no  problem  that  could  not 
be  settled  in  peace  and  without  bitterness.     But  put- 
ting aside  what  was  left  of  European  Turkey  —  a 
recognized  anomaly  that  could  be  removed  in  only  one 
way  and  that  way  quite  inevitable  —  there  were  Rus- 
sia, the  German  Empire  and  Austro-Hungary,  power- 
ful states  in  which  the  people  were  denied  control  of 
the  government.     In  Germany  and  Austro-Hungary 
there  were  popular  elements  in  more  or  less  adequate 
representative  assemblies,  but  in  both  empires  a  small 
governing  class  really  controlled  all  the  effective  ma- 
chinery of  state.     In  Russia  the  essential  principle  of 
government  was  autocratic,  working  through  a  pow- 
erful bureaucracy.     The  result  was  that  in  all  three 
there  was  an  active  and  growing  revolutionary  ele- 
ment, and  observers  in  other  countries  felt  that  the  ulti- 
mate victory  of  the  revolution  in  central  and  eastern 
Europe  was  not  only  a  mere  matter  of  time  but  might 
well  mean  a  civil  conflict  and  a  shock  to  the  world. 
It  might  be  a  necessary  and  healthful  shock,  but  a  rad- 


Europe's  unsettled  questions 


i 


1 


■i 

■■>; 

i 


ical  change  in  the  constitution  of  three  great  empires 
was  a  thing  not  to  be  contemplated  without  anxiety  — 
just  as  even  a  necessary  surgical  operation  may  involve 
shock,  suffering,  and  the  chance  of  disaster. 

3.  The  question  of  expansion  takes  us  beyond  the 
geographical  bounds  of  Europe,  but  we  may  warrant- 
ably  consider  it  in  its    eaction  on  the  parent  continent. 
The  conflict  between  c .^panding  empires  has  been  a 
familiar  danger  for  ages.     Even  in  modern  times  it 
is  a  common  observation  that  the  series  of  wars  be- 
tween   France   and    England,    the   second    Hundred 
Years'  War  as  Seeley  called  it,  from  1689  to  1815, 
became  a  duel  for  empire  with  mastery  in  America 
and  India  as  the  prize  of  the  victor.     The  wars  of 
1854-6  and  of  1877-8  were  due  to  Russia's  expansion 
towards  Constantinople;  the  nervous  tension  between 
Russia  and  Britain  during  the  latter  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  was  due  to  anticipated  conflict  in  Asia ; 
the  war  between  Russia  and  Japan  in  1904-5  was  di- 
rectly due  to  expansion  and  collision;  and  the  series 
of  crises  that  culminated  in  the  outbreak  of  war  in 
1914  largely  turned  on  rival  ambitions  and  jealousies 
in  the  Balkans,  Asia  and  North  Africa.     At  the  open- 
ing of  the  twentieth  century  peoples  of  European  stock 
so  largely  controlled  the  rest  of  the  world  that  further 
expansion  almost  inevitably  meant  war.     The  British 


il 


lO 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND  NATIONAL  LIFE 


flag  flew  over  all  of  Australia,  all  of  India,  half  of 
North  America,  a  large  part  of  south  and  central 
Africa,  and  islands  and  coasts  beyond  number. 
France  was  the  mistress  of  Madagascar,  Siam,  and  a 
huge  dependency  in  north-west  Africa.  Latin- Amer- 
ican republics  held  all  of  south  and  central  America, 
their  independence  jealously  guarded  by  the  United 
States.  The  United  States  of  America  had  not  only 
become  the  greatest  power  in  the  world  outside  of 
Europe  but  had  extended  American  influence  across 
the  Pacific.     Russia  dominated  north  and  central  Asia. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  to  point  out  the  grave  and 
complex  problems  involved  in  imperialism.  But  ex- 
cept for  two  of  the  European  states  it  did  not  seem 
likely  in  19 14  that  these  problems  need  disturb  the 
peace  of  the  world  in  the  immediate  future.  The 
ancient  rivalry  between  England  and  France  was 
ended  by  the  understanding  reached  in  1904.  The 
more  recent  rivalry  between  England  and  Russia 
was  settled,  apparently,  by  the  treaty  of  1907.  There 
were  still  dangers  in  the  situation,  but  the  only  actual 
and  impending  menace  came  from  the  ambitions  of 
Germany  and  Italy. 

Germany  had  secured  in  the  scramble  of  the  eighties 
only  three  sections  of  Africa,  large  in  area  but  of 
doubtful  value,  and  she  held  also  a  few  islands  that 
were  of  little  importance  without  further  acquisitions. 


EUROPE  S   UNSETTLED   QUESTIONS 


II 


To  erect  a  German  colonial  empire  at  all  commensurate 
with  Germany's  position  in  Europe  would  be  possible 
only  through  war  and  conquest,  unless  indeed  western 
Asia  might  be  relieved  from  Turkish  rule,  developed, 
and  ultimately  annexed.  So  the  hope  embodied  in  the 
Drang  nach  Osten  became  a  cardinal  factor  in  German 
politics,  more  evident  with  each  year  of  the  new 
century.  But  it  involved  the  crossing  of  the  Balkan 
peninsula,  and  this  meant  a  threat  against  the  inde- 
pendent nationality  of  the  Balkan  states  and  an  al- 
most inevitable  conflict  with  Russia.  The  south-west- 
ern push  of  Russia,  the  south-eastern  push  of  Germany 
intersected. 

Second  only  to  this  in  danger  were  the  ambitions  of 
Italy  to  control  the  Adriatic  and  to  acquire  part  of 
North  Africa.  Her  wrath  at  the  French  annexation  of 
Tunis  in  1 88 1  had  thrown  her  into  the  Triple  Alliance 
with  Austro-Hungary  and  Germany.  Her  disastrous 
adventure  in  Abyssinia,  (1896)  only  persuaded  her  to 
look  for  colonies  nearer  home.  Her  conquest  of  Trip- 
oli in  1911-2  was  a  dangerous  portent.  And  her  am- 
bition to  make  the  Adriatic  an  Italian  lake  was  an  im- 
mediate menace  to  Austro-Hungary  and  a  potential 
menace  to  Serbia.  Here  was  a  knot  that  might  well 
call  for  the  sword.  And  now  that  the  sword  has 
struck  and  has  been  returned  to  its  sheath  the  knot  is 
seen  to  be  only  partly  cut.     Even  the  collapse  of  the 


12  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL  LIFE 

Austro-Hungarian  Empire  has  not  solved  the  problem 
of  Trieste,  and  there  still  remain  the  rival  claims  of 
Italy,  and  the  new  Jugo-Slav  state  across  the  sea. 
Italy'sdreams  of  expansion  eastward  would  seem  to  be 
inconsistent  with  the  national  hopes  of  the  Slavs  of 
Serbia,  Bosnia  and  Croatia. 

4.  The  industrial  revolution  had  created  a  condition 
that  might  or  might  not  issue  in  war  indeed,  but  ihat 
might  and  did  issue  in  political  and  social  disturbances 
of  the  first  magnitude.     The  effects  of  the  change  in 
production  and  distribution  would  alone  have  been 
enormous  even  if  they  had  come  about  by  some  simple 
magic  of  science  without  the  rise  of  factories  and  fac- 
tory towns.     But  the  factory  system  had  meant  first 
the  oppression  and  degradation  of  the  laborer,  then 
combination  in  unions,  the  gradual  development  of  a 
social  intelligence  among  the  laborers,  and  the  appear- 
ance of  a  state  of  affairs  in  which  the  relation  between 
capitalists  and  laborers  became  one  of  armed  neutrality, 
war,  or  peace  based  on  treaties. 

Finally,  as  the  world  struggled  to  adjust  itself  to  the 
situation,  there  appeared  at  least  two  new  phenomena 
which  still  exist  and  are  still  in  process.  One  is  the 
extension  of  capitalism  among  the  laborers  themselves. 
The  other  is  the  appearance  of  a  variety  of  social  gos- 
pels among  which  that  which  goes  under  the  vaguely 
understood  word  "  socialism  "  is.  no  doubt  pre-emi- 


EUROPE  S   UNSETTLED  QUESTIONS 


13 


nent.  Fifty  years  ago  socialism  was  sufficiently  pow- 
erful to  attract  the  thunderbolts  of  Bismarck.  But 
they  were  launched  in  vain.  The  new  program  of 
economic  and  social  upheaval  waxed  stronger  under 
both  persecution  and  the  scorn  of  the  elect,  until  now 
socialism  has  definitely  appeared  in  international  poli- 
tics. It  is  dominant,  temporarily  at  any  rate,  in  Ger- 
many and  in  Russia,  and  wheher  or  not  it  retains  its 
present  forms  it  represents  a  force  which  cannot  be 
ignored.  Like  incomplete  and  thwarted  nationality, 
like  incomplete  and  thwarted  democracy,  like  the  con- 
flict of  expanding  empires,  the  vigorous  agitation  of 
the  classes  hitherto  without  power  in  national  direction, 
their  demand  for  a  more  perfect  economic  organization 
of  society,  represents  one  of  the  world's  unsettled 
problems. 

But  partly  arising  from  nationality,  democracy,  ex- 
pansion, and  the  industrial  revolution,  and  partly 
springing  from  less  tangible  sources  and  currents, 
there  is  a  movement  of  which  socialism  is  only  one 
phase,  and  that  not  necessarily  the  most  important.  It 
is  a  movement  which  will  not  formally  appear,  per- 
haps, in  any  diplomatic  discussion  nor  be  given  a  place 
in  any  treaty.  And  yet  one  who  is  studying  the  basis 
of  reconstruction  cannot  ignore  it.  We  might  define 
it  briefly,  adapting  Michelet's  famous  definition  of  the 
Renaissance  ("  the  discovery  of  man,  the  discovery  of 


14 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


the  world")  as  man's  discovery  of  humanity.  And 
if  this  sounds  vague  and  rhetorical  it  is  because  the 
movement  itself  has  a  vagueness  and  a  tremendous  po- 
tency that  defies  exact  definition.  How  are  we  to  de- 
fine the  spectacle  of  the  human  mind  breaking  its  an- 
cient bonds,  questioning  all  things  and  overleaping  all 
barriers,  the  human  soul  reaching  out  to  others  and 
discovering  kinship,  the  human  spirit  with  new  vision 
and  new  power  breaking  the  chains  of  ignorance, 
destroying  the  dividing  walls  of  class  and  prejudice, 
holding  up  the  ideal  of  liberty,  equality  and  brother- 
hood, seeing  new  meaning  in  the  command  Be  ye  there- 
fore perfect.  At  the  close  of  the  most  terrible  war 
recorded  in  human  annals,  with  a  great  part  of  the 
world  writhing  in  still  unrelieved  agony,  we  can  yet 
feel  that  Armageddon  was  the  tempestuous  announce- 
ment of  the  adolescence,  let  us  say,  of  a  new  age,  whose 
birth  was  proclaimed  with  the  Social  Contract  and  the 
French  Revolution.  It  was  the  conflict  of  forces  that 
have  been  taking  shape  for  a  hundred  years  and  more. 
And  it  had  hardly  begun  when  dreams  and  aspirations 
once  vague  and  clouded  —  revealed  only  to  the  few  — 
became  clearer  and  more  insistent  for  realization. 

On  the  surface  and  in  its  inception  the  issues  of  the 
war  were  political  —  the  ambitions  of  a  state  intoxi- 
cated with  power,  the  rivalry  of  Pan-germanism  and 


Europe's  unsettled  questions 


15 


Pan-s!avism,  the  conflict  of  democracy  with  auto- 
cratic or  aristocratic  militarism.  And  these  issues 
were  great  and  fateful,  not  in  any  sense  to  be  ignored. 
Yet  before  the  German  armies  had  been  in  Belgium  a 
day,  certainly  long  before  Verdun  or  the  Somme,  we 
were  aware  that  there  were  moral  and  spiritual  issues 
vastly  greater  than  any  question  of  control  of  the 
Balkans,  the  possession  of  Alsace-Lorraine,  or  even 
popular  versu  autocratic  government.  And  as  the 
struggle  went  on  the  directly  political  issues,  important 
as  they  were,  appeared  relatively  less  and  less  so. 
Even  the  Revolution  in  Russia,  apparently  a  purely  po- 
litical phenomenon,  soon  turned  out  to  be  political 
mainly  in  a  negative  sense.  For  it  was  not  construc- 
tive in  the  ordinary  sense  at  all;  it  was  an  upheaval 
of  moral  and  spiritual  forces  that  were  sweeping  aside 
an  outworn  form.  The  original  causes  of  the  war 
were  almost  forgotten  as  the  new  issues  leaped  into 
view,  dazzling  and  bewildering,  new  and  yet  not  new, 
familiar  and  yet  smiting  us  with  the  shock  of  sudden 
and  vivid  comprehension.  Even  the  dramatic  collapse 
of  the  two  Central  Empires  stirred  our  imagination  but 
sluggishly,  so  convinced  were  we  that  Hohenzollerns 
and  Hapsburgs  had  been  stage  heroes,  dressed  in  trum- 
pery and  out-of-date  splendor  —  that  the  life  and  spirit 
of  their  drama  had  vanished  befor  t  the  fall  of  the  cur- 


I) 

r 


1 6  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

tain,  the  last  scenes  played  before  a  cold  and  disil- 
lusioned audience. 

Part  of  our  task  then  will  be  to  trace  the  source 
of  Europe's  troubles  in  the  thwarted  development  of 
nationality  and  democracy,  in  the  mixture  of  good  and 
evil  in  expansion,  in  the  class  conflicts  and  social  up- 
heavals that  have  come  from  the  working  out  of  the 
industrial  revolution.  But  we  must  never  lose  sight  of 
the  fact  that  these  do  not  cover  the  whole  field.  Be- 
hind them,  driving  them  and  often  molding  them,  is 
the  less  concrete  but  none  the  less  dynamic  movement 
toward  spiritual  emancipation. 


n 


Revolution  and  Readjustment  in  France 

The  French  Revolution  began,  our  historians  tell  us, 
with  the  meeting  of  the  States  General  ^  in  May,  1789, 
or  with  the  storming  of  the  Bastille  by  the  Paris  mob 
in  the  following  July,  or  with  the  abolition  of  feudal 
privileges  in  August.  And  it  is  commonly  considered 
to  have  closed  with  the  beginning  of  Napoleon's  mas- 
tery in  1799  or  perhaps  with  the  final  collapse  of  his 
power  in  18 15.  These  dates  have  the  advantage  of 
definiteness  and  convenience.  But  we  must  not  let 
them  obscure  the  real  facts.  Dates  are  landmarks, 
quite  indispensable  for  clear  historical  thinking;  but 
when  we  use  them  to  mark  ofif  periods  they  are  never 
more  than  approximate,  and  to  allow  them  to  dominate 
our  minds  is  much  worse  than  to  ignore  them  entirely. 
The  events  of  1789  were  of  great  importance  and  are 

» States  General  is  the  name  given  to  the  body  which  was  the 
French  equivalent  of  the  English  Parliament.  It  represented 
three  classes  or  estates -the  first  estate,  the  clergy,  the  second, 
the  nobles,  and  the  third,  the  Commonr.  or  towns-people.  The 
Mates  General  met  first  in  1302,  seven  years  after  the  birth  of 
the  English  Parliament  in  1205.  But  it  had  a  less  happy  history, 
and  Its  last  m.eting  before  1789  was  in  1614.  From  1614  to  1789 
the  kmg  was  an  autocrat. 

17 


l8  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL  LIFE 

worth  remembering  with  all  possible  exactness.  They 
represent  the  visible  end  of  the  old  Bourbon  regime. 
But  in  its  real  significance  to  France  and  to  Europe  the 
Revolution  is  as  difficult  to  date  exactly  as,  say,  the 
Renaissance,  or  what  we  call  the  Middle  Ages,  or  the 
Reformation.  It  began  long  before  1789  and  ended 
—  it  may  be  — about  a  century  later.  Indeed  some 
have  suggested  not  inaptly  that  it  ended  with  the  Marne 
and  Verdun.  And  we  shall  even  see  reasons  for  be- 
lieving that  it  is  still  in  process,  that  France's  problem 
of  reconstruction  is  really  best  understood  as  a  phase 
of  the  Revolution.  For  the  Revolution  represented 
not  merely  a  political  change  from  absolutism  to  de- 
mocracy but  a  changed  way  of  looking  at  life,  a  social 
and  spiritual  movement,  vague  perhaps  as  to  exact 
dates  but  by  no  means  vague  in  its  essential  character 
or  in  its  results. 

The  fact  remains  that  conventional  dates  have  their 
value  in  giving  us  a  kind  of  skeletal  structure,  and 
there  are  a  few  that  we  shall  assume  in  our  discussion. 
Let  us  fix  in  our  minds  the  publication  of  Rousseau's 
Social  Contract  in  1761  and  his  Emile  in  1762.  the 
meeting  of  the  States  General  in  1789.  the  proclama- 
tion of  the  first  French  Republic  in  1792,  the  attain- 
ment of  supreme  power  by  Napoleon  Bonaparte  in 
1799-1804.  his  fall  and  the  restoration  of  the  Bour- 
bons in  181 5,  the  expulsion  of  Charles  X  and  the  ex- 


REVOLUTION   AND  READJUSTMENT 


19 


periment  of  an  elective  king,  Louis  Philippe,  in  1830, 
his  removal  and  the  proclamation  of  the  Second  Re- 
public in   1848,  the  Second  Empire  — that  of  Na- 
poleon III  —  from  1852  and  1870,  and  the  beginning 
of  the  Third  Republic  in  September,  1870,  after  the 
defeat  at  Sedan.     Beneath  the  surface,  beneath  these 
securely  dated  political  facts  and  giving  them  meaning, 
was  the  spirit  of  the  Revolution,  the  spirit  that  moved 
France  from  the  mid-eighteenth  century  to  the  present 
day.     It  is  only  by  understanding  this  spirit,  the  mo- 
tive  force   that  gave   the   Revolution   its   power  to 
destroy  and  rebuild,  that  we  can  see  the  meaning  and 
drift  of  the  gropings,  the  discouragements,  the  mighty 
enthusiasms,  the  failures  and  the  successes  of  a  great 
people  in  a  great  era. 

What  then  was  in  the  minds  of  the  representatives 
of  the  French  towns  as  they  took  their  seats  in  the 
great  hall  at  Versailles  on  the  fifth  of  May,  1789? 
What  questions  and  what  ideals  were  stirring  them, 
what  education  had  equipped  them  for  the  task  that  lay 
before  them,  what  leaders  and  forces  had  molded 
them?  Only  in  small  degree  can  we  answer  this,  but 
we  can  very  easily  see  the  essential  facts  that  they  faced 
and  the  most  controlling  ideals  that  ruled  them.  The 
most  obvious  of  the  facts  was  the  appalling  political 
crisis  that  had  caused  the  government,  sorely  against 
Its  wish,  to  call  them  together;  the  most  obvious  of  the 


V 


I) 


20 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND    NATIONAL  LIFE 


ideals  was  that  voiced  by  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau;  and 
the  minds  of  the  Deputies,  as  of  most  thinking  French- 
men, moved  along  channels  largely  made  for  them  by 
Montesquieu,  the  Encyclopaedists  and  Voltaire. 

Every  member  of  the  States  General  knew  that  the 
actual  government  of  France  was  a  ghastly  failure. 
They  knew  that  the  previous  century  had  seen  the  de- 
velopment of  an  absolute  monarchy  which  had  at  least 
had  the  merit  of  brilliant  success.     Under  Henry  IV, 
under  the  ministers  of  Louis  XIII —  Richelieu  and 
Mazarin  — and  under  Louis  XIV  and  his  advisers, 
notably  Jean  Baptiste  Colbert.  France  had  become  the 
first  state  of  Europe,  first  in  military  power,  in  indus- 
try, in  commerce,  in  literature,  and  in  military  and  es- 
thetic leadership.     Freedom   was   indeed   sadly  cur- 
tailed, and  there  were  many  abuses.     But  i  f  France  was 
governed  by  an  autocracy  it  was  at  least  an  efficient 
one,  and  if  the  merchants   the  craftsmen,  the  profes- 
sional men,  even  the  land-holding  aristocrats,  were  al- 
lowed no  share  in  legislation  or  administration  they 
at  least  waxed  prosperous  and  grew  in  mental  keenness, 
in  breadth  of  vision,  in  spiritual  courage  and  initiative.' 
Then  came  the  later  d^ys  of  Louis  XIV,  when  the 
giants  were  dead  p^d  when  defeat  and  disaster  hum- 
bled the  pride  of  France.     Then  came  year  after  year 
of  futile  government  when  a  people  intelligent  and 
quick  beyond  most  others,  a  people  trained  to  know 


REVOLUTION   AND  READJUSTMEV-^ 


31 


t'llicient  leadership  when  they  saw  it,  learned  to  de- 
spise their  rulers  and  to  chafe  at  neglected  abuses. 
When  at  last  national  bankruptcy  threatened,  and  the 
government  of  Louis  XVI  was  forced  to  summon 
the  States  General,  every  man  who  came  to  Versailles 
knew  the  record,  knew  the  story  of  the  great  days  of 
Henry  IV,  Richelieu  and  Colbert,  of  the  evil  days  of 
Louis  XV  and  Louis  XVI.  The  monarchy  was 
weighed  in  the  balance  and  found  wanting.  The  glit- 
ter of  the  court  of  Louis  XIV  had  concealed  the  false 
principles  on  which  it  was  based.  Now  the  glitter  was 
gone,  and  the  rotten  foundations  stood  out  in  melan- 
choly clearness.^ 

Moreover,  they  all  knew  that  while  the  political  ma- 
chinery had  been  groaning  and  creaking  toward  dismal 
collapse  the  people,  powerless  in  government,  had 
shown  no  signs  of  decadence  or  apathy.  Keen  think- 
ers and  prophetic  geniuses  had  entered  eagerly  on  the 
inquiry  into  natural  laws,  the  basis  of  government,  the 
principles  of  economics,  the  foundations  of  religion, 
all  the  phenomena  of  nature  and  society.     Everywhere 

1  The  student  who  wishes  to  have  a  brief  first-hand  statement 
of  the  abuses  and  tyrannies  that  were  to  be  swept  away  in  the 
Revolution  may  find  ''t  in  the  Protest  of  the  Cour  des  Aides  pre- 
sented to  the  king  in  1775,  fourteen  years  before  the  meeting  of 
the  States  General.  It  is  published  in  English  in  the  University 
of  Pennsylvania  Translations  and  :  orints  (Longmans,  Green 
and  Company). 


22 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


':} 


men  were  investigating  and  discussing  the  reason  of 
things.  Every  thinking  man  in  France  knew  of  the 
work  of  Diderot  and  his  companions  of  the  Encyclo- 
paedia. Every  man  who  could  read,  i.  e.,  the  great  mass 
of  those  who  guided  public  opinion  in  the  towns,  had 
read  the  tracts  of  Voltaire,  the  Social  Contract  and  the 
Etnilc  of  Rousseau.  Every  man  who  stood  in  out- 
ward deference  before  the  king  in  May,  1789,  had 
learned  to  ask  the  question  "why?",  had  laughed, 
albeit  grimly,  at  the  literary  cartoons  of  the  great 
mocker,  and  had  meditated  wistfully  on  the  potent 
dreams  of  a  "  return  to  nature." 

Voltaire  ( 1694- 1778)  was  the  first  literary  figure  of 
his  age.  And  he  was  far  from  being  merely  a  high 
priest  of  the  learned  and  cultivated  classes.  His  biting 
humor,  his  penetrating  and  cutting  criticisms,  his  in- 
discriminate attacks  on  church,  government,  and  con- 
ventions of  all  kinds,  his  wit  and  his  incomparable 
lucidity,  gave  him  fame  and  a  power  to  which  there  is 
no  modern  parallel.  The  gener;il  tendency  of  Euro- 
pean thought  in  his  day  was  toward  what  has  been 
called  rationalism,  the  fearless  application  of  human 
reason  to  all  fields  of  thought  and  belief.  Religious 
skepticism  was  a  fashion  among  polite  circles  iii 
France  as  it  was  in  England  and  Germany.  But  Vol- 
taire made  rationalism  and  skepticism  popular,  and  his 
pen  threatened  to  destroy  whatever  it  touched.     Often 


REVOLUTION    AND   R-LADJUSTMENT  23 

he  was  unfair.     Often  he  was  superficial.     But  he 
was  never  dull  and  he  was  always  destructive.     Yet  he 
was  neither  a  democrat  nor  an  atheist.     He  despised 
the  dreams  and  the  inarticulate  aspirations  of  the  peo- 
ple as  much  as  he  despised  royalty  and  aristocracy. 
He  built  a  church  ("Erected  to  God  by  Voltaire") 
and  avowed  that  without  belief  in  God  morality  and 
society  itself  would  perish.     One  of  his  most  char- 
acteristic and   famous  aphorisms   was  that  if  there 
were  no  God  it  would  be  necessary  to  invent  Him.     He 
attacked  the  State  because  it  was  futile,  tyrannical  and 
inefficient,  not  because  he  wished  the  rule  of  a  democ- 
racy.    And  he  attacked  the  Church  because  it  was  irre- 
ligious, artificial  and  immoral,  because  in  the  name  of 
truth  it  tried  to  chain  men's  souls  with  superstition  and 
dogmatism,  not  because  he  was  an  enemy  of  religion. 
But  whatever  were  his  personal  beliefs  his  influence 
was  purely  destructive.     Wherever  his  writings  were 
read  the  monarchy  and  the  church  were  stripped  of 
their  sacredness  and  held  un  to  ridicule. 

Rousseau  ( 1712-1778)  was  of  another  type.  H  he 
helped  to  destroy  the  institutions  and  ideas  of  his  time 
it  was  only  as  one  destroys  darkness  by  lighting  a 
lamp.  He  was  the  apostle  of  a  new  idea,  the  idea  of  a 
return  to  nature.  Voltaire  had  attacked  the  existing 
government  a?,  a  modern  cartoonist  does,  by  criticizing 
and  ridiculing  specific  acts  and  methods  of  tyranny  and 


24 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL  LIFE 


abuse.  Rousseau  concerned  himself  not  at  all  with  de- 
tails, but  struck  at  the  root  of  the  whole  system  by  de- 
claring that  men  were  by  nature  free.  "  Man  was 
born  free,  and  he  is  everywhere  in  chains,"  is  the 
first  sentence  of  the  Social  Contract.  Long  ago,  he 
said,  men  were  absolutely  free ;  there  was  no  law ;  each 
did  what  was  right  in  his  own  eyes.  But  they  tired  c  ' 
this  life  of  confusion  and  conflict  and  agreed  to  form 
a  society.  They  devised  different  forms  of  govern- 
ment, giving  up  for  the  moment  their  right  to  do  as 
they  pleased  for  the  sake  of  the  benefits  of  coopera- 
tion and  peace.  So  far  this  was  good.  But  the  gov- 
ernments managed  to  make  the  people  forget  their  an- 
cient liberty,  and  the  people  —  not  realizing  that  their 
right  to  life,  liberty  and  the  pursuit  of  happiness  was 
inalienable  —  became  slaves.  All  because  they  had 
forgotten  that  the  powers  of  the  government  were 
based  on  a  social  contract  and  on  nothing  else.  If  one 
party  to  a  contract  breaks  it  the  contract  becomes  void. 
"  You  are  in  chains,"  cried  Rousseau.  "  But  the 
chains  are  of  your  own  making;  your  liberty  is  inalien- 
able ;  your  rulers  rule  only  because  your  fathers  dele- 
gated the  right  to  sovereignty,  and  if  they  abuse  their 
delegated  power  they  cease  to  deserve  it.  Reclaim 
your  liberty !  Your  chains  are  chains  of  straw,  and  if 
you  will  they  will  vanish  at  a  breath." 

Not  that  Rousseau  wished  to  return  to  the  anarchi- 


REv'OLUTION    AND   READJUSTMENT 


25 


Tohn 


cal  state  of  nature.     Like  the  English  thinkers 
Locke  and  Thomas  Hobbes,  he  simply  used  th.  iamiliar 
"  state  of  nature  "  hypothesis  as  an  historical  sirirting- 
point,  a  false  one  as  far  as  historical  accuracy  was  con- 
cerned, but  convenient  for  purposes  of  argument.     He 
had  no  quarrel  with  the  social  contract  by  which  he  as- 
sumes men  to  have  escaped  from  anarchy.     But  he 
asserted  that  the  purpose  of  the  contract  had  not  been 
attained  because  the  general  will  of  the  people  had  been 
supplanted  by  an  artificial  and  unjustified  rule  of  the 
few.     Society  must  go  through  a  regeneration  in  order 
to  realize  the  purpose  for  which  it  came  into  being. 
The  problem  was  first  to  break  the  meaningless  and 
baseless  tyranny  of  the  existing  State,  and  then  "  to 
find  a  form  of  association  which  shall  defend  and  pro- 
tect, with  the  entire  common  force,  the  person  and  the 
goods  of  each  associate,  and  by  which,  each  uniting 
himself  to  all,  may  nevertheless  obey  only  himself,  and 
remain  as  free  as  before."  ^     So  that  he  was  not  in 
any  sense  an  anarchist ;  nor  was  he  in  the  present  sense 
of  the  term  a  socialist;  he  was  rather  stating  the  prob- 
lem and  ideal  of  popular  sovereignty. 

Rousseau's  details  of  application  were  of  little  or  no 

value.     The  magic  of  his  gospel  was  in  his  statement 

of  an  ideal  of  ordered   liberty.     And  he   carefully 

guarded  himself  against  the  charge  of  lawlessness. 

*  Social  Contract,  bk.  I,  ch.  6. 


26 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL    LIFE 


Law  is  to  him  as  fundamental  as  liberty;  both  are 
"  natural "  and  neither  is  complete  unless  it  is  corre- 
lated with  the  other.  Indeed  through  law  liberty  itself 
must  be  made  compulsory.  Thus  he  asserted  a  para- 
dox which  puts  in  a  nutshell  one  of  the  most  vital 
problems  of  the  present  hour.  "  In  order  that  the 
social  pact  may  not  be  a  vain  formula,  it  tacitly  in- 
cludes the  covenant,  which  alone  can  confer  binding 
force  on  the  others,  that  whoever  shall  refuse  to  obey 
the  general  will  shall  be  constrained  to  do  so  by  the 
whole  body,  which  means  nothing  else  than  that  he 
will  be  forced  to  be  free."  ^  It  is  a  dictum  that  might 
have  been  aptly  used  as  a  preamble  to  the  constitution 
of  the  League  of  Nations. 

As  man  is  born  free  so  he  is  born  good.  And  just 
as  he  is  everywhere  in  chains  so  he  is  everywhere  bru- 
talized by  the  warping  and  smothering  network  of  con- 
vention that  we  call  civilization.  The  program  of  po- 
litical emancipation  was  set  forth  in  the  Social  Con- 
tract, the  program  of  intellectual  and  spiritual  emanci- 
pation in  the  Ewile.  The  book  is  the  imaginary  biog- 
raphy of  a  boy  educated  in  a  natural  way.  Instead  of 
being  repressed,  molded,  fed  with  information  that  he 
loathed,  drilled  in  habits  that  had  no  meaning,  trained 
not  to  be  a  man  but  to  be  a  doll  destined  to  play  with 

*  Sec  the  whole  discussion  of  this  in  the  Social  Contract,  bk. 
I,  chs.  7  and  8. 


REVOLUTION   AND   READJUSTMLNT 


27 


Other  dolls  in  an  artificial  world,  Emile  is  tended  as  a 
precious  plant  is  tended  by  a  skilled  gardener.     T  ~  cul- 
tivate a  perfect  rose  one  docs  not  try  to  add  to  it  the 
qualities  of  a  tulip  or  a  lily,  nor  does  one  use  the  brush 
to  give  a  better  color.     What  is  needed  is  adequate  soil, 
water  and  sunlight,  protection  against  enemies  and  ac- 
cidents, such  additional  nutriment  about  the  roots  as  a 
healthy  rose  craves,  and  nature  will  do  the  rest.     The 
seed  is  as  God  made  it.      The  environment  that  will 
give  the  best  growth  is  to  be  dictated  not  by  the  gar- 
dener but  by  the  needs  of  the  plant.     His  office  is  to 
search  for  laws  over  which  he  has  no  control,  which  he 
may  not  defy  or  neglect  without  harm,  and  which  it  is 
his  sole  business  to  ascertain  and  obey.     Absolutely 
the  same  principle  is  observed  with  Emile.     If  in  the 
course  of  his  growth  the  boy  should  demand  Latin, 
Greek  or  Mathematics  to  satisfy  his  curiosity  then 
Latin,  Greek  or  Mathematics  become  living  and  needed 
things  to  him,  but  not  otherwise  should  he  be  required 
to  learn  them.     Let  him  grow  in  his  own  way.     Give 
him  food,  air,  and  sunlight;  allow  him  the  full  and 
free  exercise  of  his  normal  activities;  protect  him 
against  danger ;  let  his  growth  be  the  progressive  sat- 
isfaction of  his  own  craving;  and  if  the  result  should 
make  him  unfit  for  membership  in  society  so  much  the 
worse  for  society.     If  Emile  does  not  become  an  ac- 
complished Parisian  then  change  Paris;  do  not  force 


:/ii 


28  RECONSTRUCTION   AND    NATIONAL   LIFE 

a    child   of   God    to    become   an   artificial    manikin. 
These  then  were  the  things  that  were  uppermost  in 
the  minds  of  the  men  who  began  and  carried  through 
the  demolition  and  attempted  rebuilding  of  the  French 
state  in  and  after  1789  — on  the  one  hand  the  futility 
and  evils  of  the  traditional  system  of  government,  on 
the  other  hand  the  growing  spirit  of  scientific  inves- 
tigation, the  impatient  ridicule  of  shams  and  outworn 
conventions,  the  gospel   of  nature.     Now  what  was 
the  outcome  ?     The  idealists  of  1789-1793  dreamed  of 
a  golden  age;  the  great  sweeping  of  old  abuses  into  a 
scrap  heap  by  the  successive  assemblies  of  those  years 
was  to  be  the  prelude  to  a  glorious  and  permanent  re- 
construction.    But  the  hope  faded  as  the  years  went 
by,  bringing  reforms,  victories,  the  re-vitalizing  of  na- 
tional life  and  great  glory  —  but  no  golden  age.     Na- 
poleon appeared,  was  acclaimed  as  leader,  and  fell  be- 
fore the  armies  of  Europe  after  exhausting  France  in 
fruitless  wars.     The  Bourbon  kings  were  restored  — 
with  a  constitution,  it  is  true,  and  a  representative  as- 
sembly—but were  discarded  again  in  1830  to  make 
way  for  a  "  citizen  king.'"  Louis  Philippe.     The  ex- 
periment of  an  elective  monarchy  was  a  mere  make- 
shift and  it  lasted  a  short  eighteen  years;  the  republic 
of  1848.  the  next  experiment,  found  no  leaders,  was 
torn  by  party  conflicts,  and  died  with  small  protest  or 


REVOLUTION   AND   READJUSTMENT 


29 


mourning  when  Louis  Napoleon  consummated  the 
coup  d'etat  that  made  him  Emperor;  and  when  the  Em- 
pire fell  before  the  Prussians  in  1870  France  turned 
to  a  republic  again  with  little  enthusiasm,  little  con- 
viction that  she  had  yet  found  the  road  to  liberty, 
equality  and  fraternity — the  road  seen  with  such  ra- 
diant clearness  in  1789  and  lost  so  soon. 

The  political  history  of  modern  France  is  then  a 
melancholy  story  —  a  story,  on  the  surface,  of  failure 
and  disillusionment  and  little  else.     And  yet  it  is  not 
without  inspiration.     For  it  is  the  story  of  a  failure 
far  from  ignoble,  of  a  people  who  had  seen  a  glorious 
vision  and  were  content  with  no  compromise.     They 
accepted  this  or  that  temporary  solution  io  their  prob- 
lem—Napoleon, Louis  XVIII,  Louis  Philippe,  Na- 
poleon III,  this  or  some  other  repubhcan  form  —  only 
because  human  strength  becomes  exhausted,  because 
weariness  and  discouragement  made  necessary  a  pause 
m  the  climbing,  because  under  stress  of  effort  and 
bewilderment  ideals  grew  clouded  and  the  crying  need 
is  for  rest  and  peace.     But  that  which  unsympathetic 
onlookers  called  the  revolutionary  fever,  the  burning 
desire  for  perfection,  aroused  the  French  people  again 
and  again  to  new  effort.     Until  of  recent  years  they 
have  come  to  see  that  salvation  is  not  through  consti- 
tutions, and  that  the  road  to  perfection  may  be  found 


'I' 


30  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

by  a  way  other  than  the  constant  destruction  and 
anxious  rebuilding  of  governmental  forms. 

Now  let  us  approach  the  matter  from  another  angle. 
We  have  been  considering  the  spirit  and  aims  of  the 
Revolution,  and  have  seen  the  failure  of  France  to 
carry  out  the  high  program  of  1789.  The  reaction  of 
181 5,  the  upheavals  of  1830  and  1848,  the  restoration 
of  the  Empire  in  1852  all  seem  singularly  futile,  bar- 
ren of  actual  result,  no  matter  how  clearly  they  may 
illustrate  the  persistence  of  the  revolutionary  spirit. 
The  creation  of  the  Third  Republic  was  not  futile,  but 
in  some  respects  it  was  more  discouraging  than  the 
failure  of  1848,  for  it  was  based  on  compromise;  the 
republic  stood  not  because  it  satisfied  France  but  be- 
cause nothing  better  seemed  to  be  available. 

All  ihis  is  true,  but  it  is  not  the  whole  truth.  The 
Revolution  failed  to  realize  its  dream,  but  it  did  not 
wholly  fail.  Indeed  the  use  of  the  word  dream  is  a 
litde  deceptive  in  that  it  implies  an  ideal  based  on  no 
thought  of  practical  problems  and  of  past  experience. 
As  a  matter  of  fact  revolution  and  reconstruction  went 
hand  in  hand  from  the  beginning,  were  indeed  differ- 
ent aspects  of  the  same  thing.  And  the  men  of  1789 
—  idealists  though  they  might  be  —  were  by  no  means 
blind  visionaries. 

Revolution,  to  us,  has  perhaps  too  overwhelming  an 
association.     We  think  of  it  as  the  casting  of  old  things 


REVOLUTION    AND   READJUSTMENT 


31 


Mverboard,  the  turning  of  a  fresh  page,  the  wiping  of 
the  slate,  the  setting  forth  on  an  unknown  sea,  the 
breaking  of  a  shell  which  lies  thereafter  shattered  and 
discarded  by  the  new  life  that  issues  forth.     All  of 
these  metaphors  are  used  so  easily  that  to  some  extent 
they  control  our  thinking.     But  as  a  matter  of  fact  a 
political  revolution  is  seldom  a  complete  overthrow  and 
a  completely  new  start.     Its  analogy  in  the  life  of  an 
individual  is  perhaps  what  evangelical  Christians  call 
"  conversion  "—  a  change  undeniably  of  high  and  far- 
reaching  consequence,  but  a  change  which  leaves  in- 
tact one's  tastes,  one's  intellectual  gifts  and  equipment, 
one's  temperament,  many  of  one's  habits.     It  gives  all 
of  them  a  new  meaning  and  a  new  direction,  no  doubt, 
but  it  does  not  blot  them  out.     Similarly  when  we 
approach  the  France  of  18 15  or  even  more  the  France 
of  1870  we  must  not  exaggerate  the  efifecls  of  the  whirl- 
wind that  had  swept  her  political  world,  the  rapid 
changes  that  made  her  seem  to  her  more  sluggish  or 
cautious  neighbors  a  very  symbol  and  type  of  political 
instability.     The  truth  was  that  in  1870  as  in  18 15  the 
changes  wrought  were  less  impressive  than  the  solidity 
of  that  which  remained  standing  after  the  storm. 

For  the  old  system  was  far  from  completely  de- 
stroyed in  1789,  and  much  of  the  reconstructive  work 
'undertaken  at  each  phase  of  the  revolution  remained 
untouched  during  the  political  changes  that  followed. 


3-  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

So  that  in  considering  even  the  poHtical  side  of  modern 
France  we  must  not  think  of  an  edirice  wrecked  again 
and  again  to  be  painfully  built  again  after  each  con- 
vulsion—the present  one  dating  from  1870.  The 
form  seen  by  the  world  was  broken,  indeed;  but  the 
reality  was  left  largely  intact.  If  we  keep  our  archi- 
tectural figure  of  speech  we  might  even  think  of  Di- 
rectors, Consuls,  Emperors,  Kings  and  Presidents  as 
successive  decorative  appendages,  not  as  integral  parts 
of  the  structures  of  which  they  were  the  most  visible 
features.  Such  a  conception  would  not  be  quite  accu- 
rate, indeed,  but  it  would  be  much  safer  than  to  fix  our 
attention  solely  on  names,  titles  and  political  forms. 

Thus  it  would  be  true,  for  instance,  to  say  that  in  the 
matter  of  government  the  French  Revolution  did  not 
achieve  complete  liberty  but  did  achieve  centralization, 
i.  e.,  it  perfected  the  very  form  that  Richelieu  and  Col- 
bert had  tried  to  attain  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
The  ministers  of  Louis  XIII  and  Louis  XIV  had  done 
much  in  this  direction;  but  they  had  been  hampered 
by  privileges  and  barriers  bequeathed  from  past  ages, 
obstacles  too  firmly  established  to  be  removed.  In 
one  night,  the  night  of  August  4,  1789,  many  of  these 
crum'  led  to  dust.  The  plan  of  Richelieu  was  carried 
out  by  the  Revolution.  The  practical  French  instinct 
for  orderly  arrangement  triumphed  while  the  more 
diflficult  ideal  of  equality  remained  an  unrealized  hope. 


REVOLUTION    AND   READJUSTMENT 


33 


And  Napoleon  com  )leteH  what  the  National  Assembly 
began,  until  the  admir.istrative  system  was  created  that 
flourishes  to  this  day  —  a  division  cf  France  into  de- 
partments, each  presided  over  by  a  jirefect  appointed 
by  and  responsible  to  the  central  government.  Nearly 
all  the  actual  administrative  system  of  France  is  as 
Napoleon  shaped  it;  he  only  reduced  to  order  and 
consistency  the  work  which  the  revolutionary  assem- 
blies had  begun  ,  and  the  revolutionary  assemblies  them- 
selves followed  precedents  and  used  customs  and  ideas 
that  belonged  to  the  old  regime. 

The  essential  point  is  that  neither  an  individual  nor  a 
nation  can  change  habits,  equipment,  temperament  and 
ways  of  thinking  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye.     We  must 
think  of  the  Revolution  not  primarily  as  a  storm  that 
swept  everything  away  but  as  a  change  in  political  and 
"-ocial  perspective,  a  change  that  had  been  wc-king  be- 
neath the  political  surface  before  1789  and  that  in  and 
after  that  year  began  to  eflfect  a  re-arrangement  of  po- 
litical and  social  ideas  and  forms  in  accordance  with 
an  altered  conception  of  political  and  social  aims.    The 
change  was  in  many  ways  slow,  in  a  few  ways  very 
rapid.     Some  things,  like  the  abolition  of  feudal  privi- 
leges and  the  introduction  of  some  measure  of  na- 
tional participation  in  government,  were  done  at  once. 
No  delay  was  needed  in  the  removal  of  the  more  ob- 
vious abuses,  the  more  irritating  and  oppressive  handi- 


34  RECOXSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

caps.  But  the  full  working  out  of  the  idea  of  liberty 
and  the  devising  of  institutions  that  would  represent 
a  satisfactory  adjustment  of  liberty  and  equality  to  the 
ideals  of  France  —  this  was  slow,  a  matter  of  educa- 
tion and  experiment. 

For  it  must  be  remembered  that  the  Revolution  was 
the  work  largely  of  one  class,  the  bourgeois,  that  only  a 
small  minority  of  the  French  people  had  any  consider- 
able hand  in  any  of  the  political  changes  from  1789  to 
1870,  that  most  of  the  agricultural  population  and 
many  of  even  the  townspeople  remained  stubbornly 
conservative  throughout,  little  interested  i  +he  ques- 
tion whether  an  emperor,  a  king  or  a  prco.aent  held 
sway  at  Paris  provided  they  were  left  in  peace  to  live 
their  own  lives.  The  awakening  of  a  whole  people  to 
a  new  idea  is  bound  to  be  slow  and  subject  to  lapses. 
And  human  nature  is  too  complex  for  any  one  formula 
to  cover  its  needs  — even  the  intoxicating  cry  of 
"  liberty,  equality  and  brotherhood." 

So  that  we  may  view  the  political  changes  of  the 
nineteenth  century  not  as  failures  so  much  as  exper- 
iments, and  progressive  experiments.  And  we  must 
remember  that  all  the  glamor  of  the  word  "  liberty  " 
did  not  conceal  from  Frenchmen  the  fact  that  govern- 
ment is  a  practical  affair  in  which  caution  is  a  virtue, 
machinery  necessary,  experience  not  to  be  despised, 
and  efficiency  by  no  means  to  be  sacrificed.     A  con- 


REVOLUTION    AND   READJUSTMENT 


35 


stitution  might  be  found  unsatisfactory  and  might  be 
displaced,  but  a  practical  and  beneficent  reform  was 
to  be  retained,  certainly.  Failure  to  discover  the  ideal 
form  of  government  might  be  discouraging,  and  might 
have  an  unfortunate  eflfect  on  the  body  politic,  but  in 
the  meantme  every  experiment  had  its  value  and  ex- 
perience was  teaching  its  lesson.  In  other  words  the 
failure  was  external  and  superficial,  due  mainly  to  the 
essential  difiiculty  of  the  problem,  to  passionate  in- 
tensity of  partisanship,  and  to  lack  of  leadership  — 
for  though  the  nineteenth  century  produced  many  great 
Frenchmen  there  was  not  in  the  list  a  single  statesman 
of  the  first  rank.  But  it  was  failure  that  was  perfectly 
consistent  with  definite  and  steady  progress  in  the 
fundamentals  of  government  —  law,  order,  and  equal 
justice  —  and  with  brilliant  achievements  in  every 
other  field  of  national  life. 

What  France  needed  above  all  things  at  the  opening 
of  the  twentieth  century  was  courage,  self-confidence, 
realization  that  the  form  mattered  less  than  the  reality. 
And  the  Marne,  Verdun,  the  restoration  of  Alsace- 
Lorraine  have  perhaps  given  her  the  one  thing  neces- 
sary. We  may  yet  see  the  long  and  valiant  progress 
in  reconstruction  end  in  triumph,  the  principles  of  the 
Revolution  adjusted  to  the  spirit  and  genius  of  France. 
For  she  has  never  lost  sight  of  the  goal ;  she  has  never 
given  up  her  strong  and  patient  search  for  the  road ; 


^'1 


3^>  RECONSTRUCTION    AND    NATIONAL    LIFE 

she  has  never  relapsed  into  apathy,  however  weary  and 
discouraged  she  might  he;  and  the  wiping  out  of  the 
disaster  of  1870  has  given  her  a  new  and  splendid 
courage. 


Ill 


The  French  Revolution  and  National  Life 

We  shall  try  now  to  see  the  working  out,  the  ad- 
justment, the  modification,  the  progressive  understand- 
ing of  the  principles  of  the  Revolution  not  in  political 
changes,   not   in   constitutional    experiments,    out    in 
things  that  expressed  and  affected  the  French  people 
in  their  ways  of  looking  at  life.     They  found  it  diffi- 
cult to  work  out  a  political  creed  beyond  its  funda- 
mental propositions  of  liberty  ,.nd  equality,  even  more 
difficult  to  work  out  a  form  that  would  express  even 
such  articles  of  the  creed  as  they  did  see  and  accept. 
But  they  could  and  did  set  about  the  task  of  educa- 
tion, and  they  could  apply  their  energies  to  the  fields  of 
art,  literature  and  social  betterment.     In  these  we  may 
see  the  national  genius  seizing  on  all  the  fundamental 
principles  of  the  Revolution  —  liberty,  sincerity,  the 
return    to    nature  — and    still    remaining    essentially 
French,  with  the  French  passion  for  lucidity,  magnifi- 
cence and  idealism.     Sometimes  these  seem  to  clash, 
—  lucidity  with  libeity,  magnificence  with  sincerity 
and   simplicity,    idealism   with    naturalism.     But    the 
conflict   was    not   irreconcilable,    and   the   study   of 

37 


i'  i 


38  RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

some  of  its  phases  may  help  us  to  understand 
the  education  of  the  French  people  for  their  new 
era,  the  basis  of  their  problem  of  reconstruction. 
We  shall  discuss  here  only  three  lines  of  development 
—  education,  because  it  is  fundamental,  painting,  be- 
cause it  throws  light  on  some  of  the  most  interesting 
sides  of  the  new  French  spirit,  and  the  entry  of  the 
workingmen  into  politics  because  it  is  a  peculiarly 
vital  element  in  present-day  France. 

I.  Thirty  years  before  the  Revolution  Diderot  had 
mapped  out  a  plan  of  national  education,  a  scheme  of 
the  centralized,  clearly  apprehended  sort  dear  to  the 
French  mind,  by  which  the  University  at  Paris  should 
be  the  top  of  a  pyramid  and  a  universal  system  of 
schools  its  base.     This  remained  a  suggestion  until  the 
end  of  the  old  regime.     But  among  the  projects  laid 
before  the  representatives  of  France  in  the  early  nine- 
ties were  several  proposals  for  a  national  system  of  ed- 
ucation along  the  lines  indicated  by  Diderot.     And 
while  it  was  easier  in  those  agitated  years  to  pass  res- 
olutions than  to  undertake  the  immense  task  of  bring- 
ing into  being  a  great  body  of   schools  demanding 
skilled  teachers,  careful  supervision,  and  the  consider- 
ation  of  innumerable  details   of  administration   and 
method,   yet    the   new    spirit   was    clearly   manifest. 
Leaders  of  all  parties  agreed  that  a  free  state  must  rest 
on  intelligent  citizenship,  and  Danton  even  advocated 


FRENCH    REVOLUTION    AND    NATIONAL   LIFE       39 

the  taking  over  of  all  children  from  the  uneven  and 
often  unintelligent  control  of  their  parents  to  be  edu- 
cated by  the  nation  at  the  nation's  expense. 

Moreover  a  change  took  place  in  the  whole  concep- 
tion of  the  content  and  purpose  of  education.  The 
schools  of  pre-revolutionary  France  were  classical 
schools  for  the  training  of  scholars,  professional  men 
and  gentlemen.  Their  curriculum  ignored  the  "  practi- 
cal "  studies  that  might  contribute  to  the  life  of  the  or- 
dinary citizen.  For  ages  the  religious  ideal  had  dom- 
inated the  schools  of  the  Christian  world,  until  the 
Renaissance  added  to  the  religious  ideal  that  of  liter- 
ary appreciation  and  classical  scholarship.  The  scien- 
tific renaissance  of  the  seventeenth  century  had  begun 
an  active  movement  for  the  introduction  of  science  to 
the  curriculum ;  but  the  effect  of  the  scientific  impulse 
had  been  slight  up  to  1789,  and  the  actual  schools 
of  the  eighteenth  century  were  schools  of  polite  learn- 
ing —  and  polite  religion  —  for  the  upper  cla.ies. 
With  the  Revolution  came  a  new  ideal  and  the  begin- 
ning of  a  revision  in  curriculum  ind  method  which 
have  persisted  and  developed  to  the  present  day.* 

•  We  use  the  word  "  beginning  "  with  the  usual  reservations.  It 
is  the  common  and  not  uninstructive  experience  of  the  historical 
student  to  find  that  a  movement  that  "began"  at  some  stated 
time  had  really  been  going  on  for  generations  or  centuries.  The 
point  of  this  word  nf  caiitinn  here  may  be  ?een  by  any  one  who 
cares  to  look  into  the  educational  ideas  of,  say,  Rabelais  and 
Comenius. 


40  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

The  ideal  was  intelligent  citizenship,  "social  effi- 
ciency"; the  revision  of  the  curriculum  was  in  the 
direction  of  subordinating  the  classics  to  history,  ge- 
ography, natural  science  and  the  modern  languages 
and  literature;  the  change  of  method  was  along  the  line 
suggested  by  the  Emile  and  developed  by  the  Swiss 
teacher  Pestalozzi. 

The  whole  educational  change  was  so  profound,  de- 
manded the  study  and  digestion  of  so  complex  a  mass 
of  details,  that  it  was  bound  to  be  slow.     The  the- 
orists of  the  eighteenth  century  saw  the  general  idea 
quite  clearly,  but  we  can  concede  the  merits  of  their 
program  without  blaming  them  for  failing  to  realize 
it-     No  matter  how  just  a  plan  or  how  true  a  theory 
there  are  always  innumerable  obstacles  to  a  great  edu- 
cational reform  in  prejudices  to  be  conciliated,  tradi- 
tions to  be  conquered,  machinery  to  be  devised,  de- 
tailed plans  to  be  worked  out.     The  essential  point  is 
that  the  need  for  public  education  was  seen  and  faced, 
an  integral  element  in  the  hopes  and  plans  of  the  new 
France.     It  was  given  a  preliminary  form  by  Napo- 
leon's creation  of  the  University  of  France,  a  system 
of  national  education  controlled  from  top  to  bottom 
by  the  he^d  of  the  University  in  Paris;  it  was  limited 
in  scope  by  the  Emperor's  desire  to  check  the  immense 
popular  forces  that  had  given  him  his  power  and 
might  menace  it  in  future,  and  it  suflfered  from  the  re- 


FRENCH    REVOLUTION    AND    NATIONAL   LIFE       4 1 

action  and  the  exhaustion  of  France's  vitality  after 
1815;  but  it  revived  with  the  expulsion  of  Charles 
X  and  the  comparative  liberalism  of  the  thirties,  and 
has  moved  steadily  ahead  ever  since. 

Education  in  France  has  lacked  the  brilliant  reform- 
ers whose  genius  gave  peculiar  interest  to  the  educa- 
tional movement  in  Germany.  But  it  has  suffered  less 
from  the  domination  of  a  narrow  and  stifling  if  unde- 
niably efficient  control,  for  while  the  French  school 
system  is  absolutely  centralized,  supervised  by  the  gov- 
ernment as  completely  as  in  Germany,  yet  France  was 
never  Prussia.  Political  influence  has  often  worked 
harm.  But  on  the  whole  the  program  of  the  Revolu- 
tion has  been  nobly  carried  through.  In  1789  fifty  per 
cent,  of  the  men  in  France  and  seventy-five  per  cent,  of 
the  women  could  not  sign  their  names.  By  1870  the 
percentage  of  illiteracy  was  reduced  to  twenty-five  for 
men  and  thirty-seven  for  wornen.  By  1898  it  was  cut 
down  to  five  and  sever  ^  •■  ctively.  And  by  the 
opening  of  the  war  illitei  ad  almost  disappeared.^ 

It  is  impossible  to  measur-j  cue  significance  of  such  a 
progress.  For  the  future  of  France  it  means  incom- 
parably more  than  the  achievements  of  a  few  brilliant 
leaders. 

^  For  reference  see  Monroe,  Text-book  in  the  History  of  Edu- 
cation (Macmillan),  and  Farrington.  French  Secondary  Schools 
(Longmans),  and  The  Public  Primary  School  System  of  France 
(Teachers'  College,  Columbia  University,  1906). 


42  RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

2.  The  Student  who  wishes  to  see  at  a  glance  the 
historical  and  human  interest  of  painting  should  place 
side  by  side  any  characteristic  work  of  Watteau 
Greuze,  Millet  and  -  say  -  Cezanne.  Let  us  elim- 
inate the  question  of  like  or  dislike  and  quite  ignore  the 
point  of  view  of  the  "  art  critic."  Let  us  simply  re- 
member that  every  painter,  willingly  or  unwillingly, 
consciously  or  unconsciously,  reflects  the  tastes  and  in- 
terests  of  the  people  for  whom  he  paints,  the  environ- 
ment which  has  molded  his  own  attitude  to  life. 

Watteau-s  picture  stands  for  a  single  class  -  the 
pleasure-loving,   irresponsible   aristocracy  of  the  old 
regime.     It   fits    harmoniously    into    a    Luxembourg 
drawmg  room  of  Louis  XV.     It  is  dainty,  gay,  full 
of  the  spirit  that  we  associate  with  the  ball  room  and 
the  banquet  hall.     Its  world  is  not  a  fairy  world  - 
avowedly  remote  from  all  that  is  visible  and  prosaic  but 
perfectly  real  to  the  imagination  of  every  one.  king  or 
peasant,  who  has  ever  been  a  normal  child ;  it  is  not  the 
world  of  the  ordinary  man.  the  world  of  nature  and 
of  daily  life;  it  is  not  even  the  workl  of  great  deeds,  of 
heroic  or  inspiring  moments,  or  the  world  of  allegory 
or  the  world  of  religion,  with  their  wide  appeal  to  dra- 
matic, ethical  or  spiritual  instincts.     It  is  a  world  beau- 
tiful in  its  own  way  but  essentially  artificial  and  nar- 
row, a  hot-house  flowering,  foredoomed  to  perish. 
In  .he  midst  of  this  society  of  gaiety  and  careless- 


\ 

FRENCH    REVOLUTION    AND    NATIONAL   LIFE       43 

ness  arose  a  new  fashion  in  the  later  days  of  Louis 
XV  —  the  fashion  that  we  associate  with  the  name  of 
Rousseau.  The  world  was  soon  to  know  the  tremen- 
dous potency  of  the  gospel  of  nature.  But  while  it 
spread  like  a  flame  among  the  middle  and  lower  classes 
it  was  welcomed  as  a  new  plaything  by  the  aristocracy. 
There  is  a  strange  pathos  in  the  little  hamlet  built  in 
the  park  at  Versailles,  with  cottages  like  the  cottages 
of  the  peasants,  where  Marie  Antoinette  and  her 
court  ladies  played  at  the  simple  and  rural  life.  It 
was  as  unreal  as  the  shepherdesses  and  swains  of  paint- 
ing and  poetry.  But  it  had  its  beauty  even  if  its  tragic 
side  was  still  unsuspected.  And  it  is  this  cult  of  sim- 
plicity and  pseudo-naturalism  that  one  sees  in  the  pic- 
tures of  Greuze.  They  are  neither  real  nor  unreal. 
They  have  the  beauty  and  the  truth  of  the  light  that 
heralds  a  devastating  forest  fire. 

Millet  and  his  contemporaries  came  after  the  fire 
had  roared  by.  They  were  of  a  new  world,  and  it  was 
for  the  new  world  that  they  painted,  a  world  that  was 
still  struggling  to  find  its  way  among  the  relics  and 
debris  of  the  conflagration.  Rousseau's  message  had 
been  purged  of  much  of  its  fantastic  and  unreal  element 
and  had  passed  into  a  world-wide  feeling  for  the  eter- 
nal wisdom  and  beauty  of  nature,  a  world-wide  inter- 
est in  the  "  common  man  "  whose  life  was  based  on 
solid  things.     It  is  this  that  is  voiced  by  Millet.     The 


h: 


44  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

delight  in  nature's  reality  and  peace  is  just  as  distinc- 
tive of  the  new  era  as  political  and  social  democracy, 
and  we  may  find  it  variously  expressed  not  only  in 
Millet  but  in  Corot,  in  Troyon,  in  Diaz  and  in  Theo- 
dore Rousseau.  All  of  these  are  deeply  significant, 
and  it  is  difficult  to  speak  of  them  with  moderation,  so 
truly  and  nobly  do  they  interpret  some  of  the  finest 
and  most  fruitful  visions  and  convictions  of  the  new 
France. 

Finally  there  is  Cezanne.     He  is,  we  admit,  an  ex- 
treme case.     Moreover,  to  appreciate  his  work  we 
should  study  it  in  relation  to  the  whole  development 
of  modern  French  art.     But  this  is  not  a  history  of 
French  painting,  and  we  wish  to  glance  at  a  picture 
of  Cezanne's  only  to  see  in  it  an  expression  of  present- 
day  France.     We  might  just  as  well  take  a  picture  by 
Manet,  by  Matisse,  or  by  a  dozen  others.     All  illustrate 
at  once  a  passion  for  truth  and  insistence  on  the  right 
of  the  individual  to  interpret  truth  in  his  own  way. 
Truth  and  beauty  are  seen  not  as  abstract  and  as  uni- 
versal ideas  but  as  individual  reactions,  each  man  his 
own  measure  of  what  is  true  and  what  is  beautiful. 
There  is  something  defiant  and  challenging  about  re- 
cent French  painting.     It  has  deserted  many  of  the  old 
standards,  and  in  doing  so  it  has  deserted,  it  seems  to 
many  of  us,  some  of  the  things  best  worth  while  in  art. 
"  You  do  not  like,"  the  artist  says  to  us,  "  the  subject 


FRENCH    REVOLUTION    AND   NATIONAL  LIFE       45 


I  have  chosen.  Very  well  —  I  do.  You  do  not  think 
I  have  painted  things  as  you  see  them.  No,  but  I 
have  painted  things  as  I  see  them,  which  i«=  all  a 
painter  ought  to  do  if  he  is  to  be  genuine." 

It  has  often  been  a  matter  of  comment  that  the  po- 
litical, social  and  intellectual  revolutionary  era  of  the 
close  of  the  eighteenth  century  and  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  was  not  accompanied  by  a  revolution  in 
painting.  The  painters  of  that  time  were  severely 
classic,  willing  to  portray  subjects  of  contemporary  in- 
terest but  with  no  changed  conception  of  their  art. 
But  the  revolution  has  come  in  our  own  day,  and  it  is 
not  easy  yet  to  see  signs  of  reconstruction.  It  is  vig- 
orously individual,  painstaking,  intent  on  scientific  ex- 
actness, full  of  power,  recklessly  regardless  of  conven- 
tion, the  expression  of  men  almost  furiously  alive,  with 
eyes  to  the  future  and  backs  to  the  past.  To  the  or- 
dinary onlooker  modern  French  art  is  a  chaos  of  unin- 
teresting, transient,  experimental  efiforts  to  portray 
commonplace  things  with  a  minimum  of  inspiration  — 
a  chaos  shot  by  gleams  of  beauty,  indeed,  but  in  the 
main  redeemed  only  by  its  unmistakable  signs  of  sin- 
cerity and  of  search.  Yet  it  is  part  of  France,  wad- 
ing through  swamps  and  unlovely  plains,  perhaps,  but 
wading  with  unconquerable  belief  that  the  miry  road 
leads  to  heights  undreamed  of  by  the  older  painters. 
It  may  be  so,  and  we  can  admire  the  faith  and  the  en- 


3 

1 


46  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

thusiasm  even  if  we  cannot  ourselves  see  the  Vision. 
3.  We  put  aside  with  regret  the  contribution  of  lit- 
erature, albeit  almost  yielding  to  the  temptation  to  dis- 
cuss the  value  of.  say,  Victor  Hugo.  Flaubert.  Guy  de 
Maupassant.  Daudet  and  Romain  Rolland  as  inter- 
preters of  French  life  and  thought.     But  it  is  necessary 
to  give  what  space  remains  to  us  for  the  study  of 
France  to  the  workingmen,  and  to  one  phase  of  their 
activities -the    efifort    to    reconstruct    society   on    a 
sounder  economic  basis.     In  other  words  we  have  to 
survey,  all  too  briefly,  the  growth  of  French  socialism 
and  of  Its  offshoot  or  heresy,  syndicalism. 

The    industrial    revolution    was    late    in    reaching 
France.     The  factory  system  did  not  assume  impor- 
tance until  the  later  years  of  Louis  Philippe,  and  the 
first  clear  sign  of  the  entry  of  the  workingman  into 
French  politics  was  seen  in  the  revolution  of  1848 
Socialism  existed  before  that  year,  indeed,  but  in  a  wild 
Utopian,  idealistic  form.     Its  most  noteworthv  apostle 
had  been  Fourier,  and  his  remedy  for  social  ills  was  the 
resolving  of  the  state  into  small  communities  of  the 
kind  advocated  by  Robert  Owen  in  England  and  tried 
out  with  httle  success  in  two  well-known  experiments  in 
America -at    Xew    Harmony.    Indiana   and    Brook 
Farm,   Massachusetts.     But   this  gave   place   in   the 
forties  to  a  mo^■enlent  more  like  the  socialism  of  to-day 
and  its  exponem  was  Louis  Blanc.     His  scheme,  in 


FRENCH    REVOLUTION    AND    NATIONAL   LIFE       47 

brief,  was  first  —  in  order  of  time  —  the  creation  of  an 
absolutely  democratic  state,  and  then  the  ending  of  cap- 
italistic control  of  industry  by  the  forming  of  social 
workshops,  wasteful  competition  and  the  tyranny  of 
a  class  being  abolished  by  public  ownership.  As  a  pro- 
test and  as  a  sign  of  coming  events  Louis  Blanc's  pro- 
posal had  interest  and  value,  but  it  was  never  given  a 
fair  trial;  the  solid  opposition  of  peasants  and  bour- 
geois alike  —  i.  e.,  the  vast  majority  of  the  nation  — 
to  any  radical  change  was  too  much  for  the  compara- 
tively feeble  force  of  socialism;  the  experiment  that 
Louis  Blanc  was  permitted  to  make  in  the  spring  of 
1848  was  hampered  by  impossible  conditions;  it  ended 
in  a  furious  battle  in  the  streets  of  Paris,  and  the  na- 
tion's fear  of  radicalism  had  much  to  do  with  the  end 
of  the  Second  Republic  in  1852. 

For  a  time  socialism  seemed  dead,  but  in  the  fifties 
and  the  sixties  it  arose  again  in  more  menacing  form 
under  the  leadership  of  two  gifted  German  Jews,  Fer- 
dinand Lassalle  and  Karl  Marx.  This  new  socialism 
will  be  discussed  in  another  chapter,  but  its  essence 
may  be  stated  here  in  the  words  of  Lassalle.  "  Divi- 
sion of  labor  is  really  common  labor,  social  combina- 
tion for  production.  This,  the  real  nature  of  produc- 
tion, needs  only  to  be  explicitly  recognized.  In  the 
total  production  therefore,  it  is  merely  requisite  to 
abolish  individual  portions  of  capital  and  to  conduct 


I, 


48  RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

the  labor  of  society  which  is  already  common,  with  the 
common  capital  of  society,  and  to  distribute  the  result 
of  production  among  all  who  have  contributed  to  it, 
in  proportion  to  their  performance."  »  This  is  fre- 
quently known  as  collectivism,  but  as  worked  out  in 
detail  by  Karl  Marx  it  is  practically  what  is  meant  nine 
times  out  of  ten  when  the  word  "  socialism  "  is  used 
to-day.  It  spread  rapidly  from  Germany  to  France  as 
to  all  the  industrial  countries  of  the  world,  and  became 
a  mighty  and  increasing  force  from  the  time  of  Marx 
and  Lassalle  to  the  present. 

The  ideal  of  socialism  had  at  least  an  appearance  of 
being  identical  with  liberty,  equality  and  fraternity. 
iMoreover  any  practical  working  out  of  the  idea  im- 
plied a  highly  centralized  machinery.     Both  theory  and 
method  would  seem  to  be  in  a  peculiar  degree  consist- 
ent with  French  traditions,  for  if  liberty  and  equality 
were  the  goals  of  the  Revolution  centralization  of  ad- 
ministration was  apparently  an  essential  feature  of  the 
traditional  French  conception  of  government.     And  as 
a  matter  of  fact  the  socialist  party  in  France  when  the 
twentieth  century  opened  numbered  more  adherents, 
relatively  to  other  parties,  than  in  any  other  country  in 
the  world  except  Germany. 

But  French  socialism  was  never  as  solid  and  homo- 
geneous as  that  of  Germany     For  it  became  increas- 
1  Kirkup,  History  of  Socialism,  p.  105'. 


FRENCH    REVOLUTION    AND    NATIONAL   LIFE       49 

ingly  evident  as  time  went  on  that  French  radicalism 
was  more  deep  seated  than  German,  even  as  it  was 
probably  true  that  French  conservatism  was  more  stub- 
born. And  the  views  of  the  workingmen  of  France 
shaded  off  from  orthodox  Marxianism  to  anarchism  in 
infinite  and  complex  gradations.  The  ideal  of  liberty 
was  more  powerful  than  the  tradition  of  centralization, 
and  discipline,  organization,  solidarity  appealed  less 
to  the  Gaul  than  to  the  German.  So  that  the  result 
in  recent  years  has  been  the  recession  of  social  democ- 
racy and  the  rise  of  militant  trade  unionism  or  syn- 
dicalism. 

Syndicalism  is  in  a  sense  the  offspring  of  the  two 
great  opposites  —  =rA  ialism  and  anarchism.  Socialism 
would  make  the  word  "  people  "  mean  the  workers  — 
private  capital  being  abolished  and  "  parasites  "  being 
compelled  to  work  or  starve  —  and  would  make  the 
State  the  people  organized  for  government.  The 
State,  i.  e.,  the  people,  i.  e.,  the  workers,  is  to  be  all-pow- 
erful, owning  the  instruments  of  production,  land  and 
capital,  and  controlling  all  production  and  distn'Hu;  on. 
The  anarchist,  on  the  other  hand,  would  do  away  with 
the  state  entirely,  for  even  the  socialist  governnient  — 
notwithstanding  its  plausible  theory  —  would  lend  it- 
self to  manipulation  by  crafty  and  unprincipled  poli- 
ticians. The  anarch'.st  ideal  is  untrammeled  liberty, 
and  society  is  to  be  a  matter  of  free,  cooperative  as- 


I 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL 


-IFE 


sociation  binding  on  no  one.     Anarchism  was  indeed 
a  much  more  logical  deduction   from  the  "liberty 
equality  and  fraternity"  slogan   than  socialic,,      u 
was  born  in  the  mind  of  a  Frenchman.  Proudho.,  and 
a  French  rebel  against  existing  conditions  was  luvrh 
more  apt  to  take  to  anarchism  than  to  any  theo-,  oi  nn 
organic  and  all-powerful  state.     But  anarchij-j  1 
the  disadvantage  of  being  purely  negative,  lackn.g  any 
clear  and  constructive  goal,  basing  its  hopes  for  the  fu- 
ture on  the  seductive  but  unconvincing  doctrine  that  hu- 
man nature  is  essentially  good   and  wise,   that  evil 
spnngs  solely  from  the  artificial  restraint  of  govern- 
ment.    Anarchism  and  socialism  are  agreed,  then   in 
condemning  private  capitalism,  the  present  social  sys- 
tem.     But  in  their  program  beyond  that  point  they  are 
at  opposite  poles. 

Syndicalism  represents  their  happy  reconciliation. 
Syndicat  is  simply  the  French  word  for  Trade  Union 
and  syndicalism  as  an  organi^'ed  movement  appeared 
first  when  the  Confederation  Generate  du  Travail  was 
organized  in  1895  by  a  group  of  unions  who  saw  possi- 
bilities in  the  idea  of  a  general  strike.  In  1902  this 
was  joined  by  the  bourses  du  travail.  Chambers  M 
Labor,  workingmen's  societies  which  had  been  formed 
m  Paris  and  other  cities  for  the  discussion  of  labor 
problems,  and  which  had   federated   in    189-      Th- 


FRENCH    REVOLUTION    AND    ^    VTIONAL    LIFE       5I 

combined  organization  became  a    .onfederation  ot  in- 
dustrial uniuns  in  which  the  trade  or  era  *  t    uii'v  ,     ^J 
been  merger,  i.  e.,  the  units  of  the  Conft  i.ration  were 
not  carnenicr-',  masons,  locomotive  cngiieers,  taUor- 
and  the  like  but  a  1  engaged  li:  ilu  building  'rade."^    a!! 
in  railroading,  all  1.1  ihe  cloth  np  in< -istry  ,.,   I  so  .)n. 
So  thai  if  the  carpenters    vent  on  -ir-ke  the)   wou 
be  join  d  by    hei     fellows  of  tbt   var  ous  en  ftsnic- 
associattd  .  ith  them  in  buiJdmg,  ai  d     ,-  area  01  th 
stnke  would  be  widened  witli  in     nmen  v'  inert     e  ot 
force.      A'ith  the  new  weapon     f  the  gen  ral  st    i     the 
Confederation  adopted   the  p    ■  cipl     o     "  '      ot  ac- 
tion": i.e.,  it  disda   ^ed    politics  .  n(    re-.ed    a.    abor 
aione.     Anything  and  ever  thine  ihat  couh    weaken 
and  discourage  the  capitahM  —  ir     iding.  f.       istance, 
the  famou.s  or  infamous  nieth-od  oi  ^a    '  ]er'>er- 

ate  injury  to  the  pnnt— was  conside    d    egitin  ite. 
In  the  "  clas?  war  '"     II  was  fair 

The  whole  nemen-  a  i  given  heren  e  and  a  cer- 
tain d.Hibtfir  iear  by  ^^ieor  s  Sorel,  the  Karl 
Marx  of  Syr.  calisn  Vet  i.  compare  Sorel  with  the 
apostle  of  •  ^lentific  -r  alism  is  i.sleading.  He 
does  not  try  ;  enunciate  aiy  definit.  ^i..al  system. 
He  believes  ra  er  in  the  \  alue  of  the  >.  cial  myth," 
the  unproved  ar  perhap  unprovable  belief  that  sweeps 
mankmd  to  in(   hei^hr^^    ,y  the  very  vagueness  of  its 


52  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

grandeur.     The  myth  does  not  need  to  be  true ;  it  may 
never  be  translated  into  fact;  it  does  its  work  if  it  in- 
spires enthusiasm  and  above  all  if  it  leads  to  action. 
For  action,  not  logic,  scientific  accuracy,  or  intelligence 
is  the  force  that  awakens  and  redeems,  and  action 
springs  not  from  reason  but  from  an  ideal,  a  myth, 
whose  exact  truth  ic  an  insignificant  matter.     To  the 
ordinary  mind  this  is  at  first  sight  discouraging  and 
somewhat  bewildering,  but  it  has  its  point  and  is  not 
in  itself  revolutionary.     Sorel's  real  menace  lies  in 
his  specific  gospel.     He  believes  in  the  regeneration 
of  society  through  the  regeneration  and  omnipotence 
of  the  working  class  —  the  only  class  —  in  his  view, 
that  is  worth  considering.     And  this  is  to  be  attained 
not  through  politics,  not  through  democracy,  and  not 
through  state  socialism,  but  through  organized  labor 
and  direct  action.     The  ownership  of  capital  by  all 
the  workers  — the  socialist  state  — is  a  scientific  de- 
lusion; it  would  mean  bureaucracy  and  corruption. 
Let  labor  rely  on  the  autonomous  development  of  in- 
dustrial unions ;  let  the  capital  required  in  each  indus- 
try be  owned  and  controlled  by  the  workers  of  that  in- 
dustry, those  whose  interest  is  directly  concerned  in 
that  field  of  production.     These  unions  —  federated 
by  all  means  but  not  bound  by  any  hard  and  fast  consti- 
tution or  body  of  law  —  represent  all  the  government 
that  mankind  needs.     Reform  through  politics  and 


FRENCH    REVOLUTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE        53 

laws  is  wasted  effort;  the  real  issue  is  the  "  class  war," 
and  the  real  goal  is  the  liberty  and  supremacy  of  the 
working  class.^ 

This  is  neither  anarchism  nor  socialism.  It  par- 
takes of  both.  But  it  has  the  constructive  ideal  lacked 
by  anarchism  and  the  tangible  conviction  of  liberty 
lacked  by  socialism.  And  its  interest  to  us  for  the  pur- 
pose of  this  particular  study  is  not  in  its  validity  or  its 
falsity  but  in  the  fact  that  it  is  a  great  and  growing 
power  in  France  and  in  the  additional  fact  that  it  is  a 
direct  challenge  to  the  centralization  that  'i»  supposed 
to  be  peculiarly  French.  The  French  state  has  been 
undoubtedly  dominated  by  the  centralizing  idea.  But 
the  actual  government  of  France  has  been  slipping 
away  from  centralization  with  every  decade  of  the 
Third  Republic,  and  syndicalism  strikes  at  its  very 
root.  So  perhaps  France  may  yet  cast  aside  the 
method  beloved  of  Colbert,  adopted  by  the  National 
Assembly  and  the  Convention,  perfected  by  Napoieon 
and  retained  through  the  nineteenth  century.  There 
has  been  no  visible  change  in  the  form  of  the  French 
constitution  since  1870-1875.  But  every  aspect  of 
French  life  has  been  instinct  with  revolt  during  the  last 

^The  menace  of  syndicalism  is  of  course  its  program  of  class 
domination.  And  the  rock  on  which  it  will  split  will  be  the  peas- 
antry, the  element  in  the  country  which  the  radicals  so  persist- 
ently ignore.  Syndicalism  is  known  best  in  America  through 
the  activities  of  the  I.  W.  W. 


:n 


54  RECOx\STRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

twenty  years  and  the  fiery  enthusiasm  and  strength  of 
soul  awakened  by  the  war  will  hardly  check  the  cur- 
rents  of  radicalism.  Whether  the  syndicaHst  disin- 
tegration of  society  will  continue  and  triumph  remains 
to  be  seen.     But  it  is  a  force  to  be  reckoned  with. 

What  then  is  the  upshot  of  even  so  brief  a  survey  of 
the  progress  of  France  since  the  Revolution?     Such 
conclusions  as  we  might  reach  would  be  only  confirmed 
and  illustrated  if  we  were  to  add  to  our  view  the  mes- 
sage  of  literature  and  philosophy.^     And  these,  tenta- 
tively stated,  are  fourfold :  that  the  notion  of  France 
as  decadent  and  degenerate  is  and  always  was  super- 
ficial and  quite  false,  that  the  story  of  her  political  rev- 
olutions since  1815  is  singularly  inconsequent,  throws 
little  real  light  on  her  national  development,  that  her 
eflFort  to  attain  a  liberty  and  a  social  order  that  would 
make  possible  the  highest  degree  of  sanity,  equality  of 
opportunity  and  progress  has  been  vigorous  and  con- 
tinuous, and  finally  that  this  effort  is  still  going  on,  is 
still  incomplete. 

We  repeat  then  that  the  reconstruction  of  France 
must  mean  to  us  not  simply  reconstruction  after  the 
tremendous  crisis  of  the  war.  The  invasion  of  1914 
was  a  menace  to  her  whole  national  life,  a  threatened 


FRENCH    REVOLUTION   AND    NATIONAL   LIFE       55 

interniption  to  her  progress  toward  the  national  sal- 
vation that  she  has  been  working  out  for  five  genera- 
tions. As  such  it  had  to  be  met  with  her  full  powers 
of  resistance,  for  victory  was  a  matter  of  life  or  death. 
But  the  coming  of  peace  means  more  than  the  end  of 
a  long  and  anxious  strain.  It  means  the  picking  up  of 
the  threads  of  national  advance  with  a  deeper  earnest- 
ness and  a  fuller  confidence,  the  fixing  of  the  eye  once 
more  on  the  Celestial  City  that  was  not  forgotten  dur- 
ing the  fight  with  Apollyoii  —  whose  glory  and  de- 
sirableness shone  indeed  and  still  shines  with  greater 
splendor  because  of  the  battle.  In  fine,  the  basis  of 
reconstruction  is  not  one  of  constitutional  forms,  of 
political  ambitions  or  of  rectified  frontiers;  it  is  the 
living  spirit  of  France,  cautious  yet  iconoclastic,  skep- 
tical yet  glowing  with  faith,  proud  of  her  great  mem- 
ories yet  still  striving  confidently  toward  an  ideal  —  the 
realization  of  liberty,  equality  and  brotherhood. 


IV 

The  Basis  of  Reconstruction  in  Germany 

At  the  present  moment  Germany  is  probably  the 
most  interesting  spot  on  the  globe  to  the  student  of  so- 
ciety and  nationality.     Twenty  years  ago  any  of  us 
would  have  said  that  the  German  people  had  found  the 
permanent  solution  of  their  national  problem  in  the 
Empire.     Not  that  the  empire  was  necessarily  to  re- 
main autocratic  and  militaristic,  for  the  Social  Democ- 
racy was  recognized  as  a  growing  force  that  would 
inevitably  cause  a  modification  of  the  constitution  and 
of  the  general  attitude  of  the  Empire  both  to  liberty 
and  to  world  politics;  but   no  one  anticipated  any 
fundamental  change.     In  essentials,  we  thought,  Ger- 
many had  found  herself.     Yet  we  have  seen  the  Em- 
pire collapse  and  the  whole  form  and  future  of  German 
nationality  thrown   into   solution.     Only   in   Russia, 
among  all  the  great  peoples  of  the  world,  is  the  prob- 
lem so  acute,  the  issue  so  uncertain.     And  nowhere,  if 
we  wish  to  follow  intelligently  the  events  of  the  next 
few  years,  is  it  so  necessary  to  understand  the  basis 
of  national  life  on  which  reconstruction  is  to  stand. 

56 


THE   BASIS   OF   GERMAN   NATIONAL  LIFE 


57 


It  has  become  a  commonplace  during  the  war  to  say 
that  Germany  meant  really  two  separate  things  —  the 
German  people  and  Prussia.  Commonplaces  are  not 
always  true,  but  in  this  case  the  observation  was  ac- 
curate and  even  fundamental,  true  as  it  was  that  in  the 
war  itself  the  German  people  and  Prussia  were  one. 
A  single  illustration  will  serve.  If  any  intelligent 
person  had  been  asked  in,  let  us  say,  1850,  to  name  a 
few  representative  Germans  his  list  would  have  in- 
cluded Martin  Luther,  Goethe,  Schiller,  Kant,  Hegel, 
Lessing,  Beethoven,  Niebuhr,  and  perhaps  a  dozen 
others  of  the  same  type.  Rather  less  certainly  there 
would  be  three  statesmen,  the  Great  Elector,  Frederick 
the  Great  and  Stein  —  two  of  them  Hohenzollerns  and 
the  third  a  minister  of  Prussia ;  but  none  of  these  ex- 
cept Frederick  the  Great  would  be  as  familiar  names 
to  the  world  at  large  as  those  of  the  poets  and  musi- 
cians. If  the  same  question  had  been  asked  at  any 
time  between  1870  and  1914  the  name  of  Bismarck 
v.-ould  have  leaped  out  automatically,  first  on  the  list, 
overshadowing  all  the  rest.  That  is  to  say,  the  preem- 
inent German  achievements  before  1850  were  in  the 
fields  of  philosophy,  literature,  music,  philology,  his- 
tory: since  1870  there  have  been  added  the  construc- 
tion of  a  great  State  and  the  organization  that  made 
possible  an  immense  development  of  industry  and  com- 
merce.   And  the  nearness  of  the  recent  phase,  the  strik- 


n  ■ 


58  RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

ing  and  even  spectacular  character  of  German  exploits 
since  1866,  the  fascination  both  of  enormous  military 
power  and  of  world-wide  economic  expansion,  have 
distorted  our  perspective. 

Since  August.  1914,  moreover,  the  giant  has  become 
an  ogre,  and  for  years  to  come  it  will  be  difficult  to  dis- 
sociate from  the  German  name  a  cold-blooded  inhu- 
manity, destructiveness.  arrogance  and  treachery  that 
made  a  race  honored  and  even  loved  appear  to  the 
world  as  a  loathsome  plague.     Yet  the  student  of  so- 
ciety cannot  rest  content  with  this.     He  cannot  allow 
the  events  of  less  than  half  a  century  to  obliterate  the 
memory  of  a  thousand  years.     lie  must  keep  in  mind 
the  old  Germany  as  well  as  the  Germany  of  Bismarck, 
the  Germany  of  Wittemberg  and  Weimar  as  well  as 
the  Germany  of  Louvain  and  the  Lusitania;  he  must 
remember  that  the  Empire  lasted  less  than  fifty  years- 
and  he  must  face  the  fact  that  a  sound  reconstruction,' 
the  national  redemption  of  the  German  people,  is  a 
matter  of  enormous  consequence  to  the  whole  world. 
We  cannot  ignore  the  policy  of  "  blood  and  iron."  the 
evil  deeds  of  1914-18.  but  neither  can  we  fix  our  eyes 
exclusively  on  one  epoch  and  one  phase  of  that  epoch 
without  being  led  to  false  conclusions. 

We  shall  try  first  to  see  what  is  meant  by  the  phrase 
"the  older  Germany."  Those  who  view  the  older 
Germany  as  dead  will  regard  its  study  as  more  or  less 


THE  BASIS  OF  GERMAN   NATIONAL  LIFE  59 

academic,  as  part  of  the  history  of  humanity  and  there- 
fore having  its  contribution,  but  as  having  no  direct 
bearing  on  the    problem  of  German  reconstruction. 
Few  students  will  share  such  a  view.     An  individual 
may  indeed  undergo  radical  transformation  in  a  brief 
period.     New  temptations  or  crises  may  develop  hith- 
erto dormant  and   unsuspected   weaknesses  and  the 
structure  of  character  may  collapse  as  a  healthy  bodily 
frame  may  be  disintegrated  by  a  deadly  disease;  new 
light  and  new  inspiration  may  arouse  forces  of  strength 
and  virtue  that  will  bring  about  regeneration  and  moral 
upbuilding.     But   a   whole   people   is   not   so   easily 
changed.     Nations  do  indeed  pass  through  crises,  un- 
dergo new  experiences,  suffer  modifications  for  good 
and  evil  that  often  suggest  a  parallel  to  the  conversion, 
the  awakening,  the  degeneration  of  an  individual.    But 
the  national  mass  is  so  complex  that  its  changes  are 
bound  to  be  less  radical  and  less  rapid  than  those  of  a 
single  human  being,  and  the  parallel  is  only  suggestive, 
not  conclusive.     We  shall  refuse  to  admit  then  that 
the  Germany  of  the  future  is  any  more  apt  to  resemble 
the  Germany  of  Bismarck  than  the  Germany  of  Goethe. 
There  has  been  a  change,  no  doubt,  but  neither  the 
splendor  nor  the  blunders  and  crimes  of  the  last  phase 
of  German  history  convince  us  that  continuity  was  ir- 
reparably broken.     The  old  foundations  are  still  there 
and  much  of  the  superstructure  may  need  only  repair 


6o 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


and  alteration,  even  if  a  new  plan  be  adopted,  some  of 
the  decoration  and  walls  be  torn  down,  and  the  archi- 
tects be  dismissed. 

Politically,  Germany  did  not  exist  in  the  eighteenth 
century  at  all.     It  was  brought  into  being  by  the  ham- 
mer strokes  of  Napoleon.     When  the  States  General 
of  France  met  at  Versailles  in  1789  there  were  over 
three  hundred  independent  states  in  what  we  now  call 
Germany,  and  Austria  was  as  much  a  German  state  as 
Bavaria   or   Saxony.     They   were  held   together  in 
theory  by  thf     .adow  of  a  great  name,  the  Empire,  but 
the  title  of  Emperor  — held  usually,  since  the  thir- 
tenth  century,  by  the  head  of  the  House  of  Hapsburg 
—  meant  only  dignity,  a  certain  splendor  hallowed  by 
associations,  by  memories  of  Frederick  Barbarossa, 
Otto  the  Great,  Charlemagne  and  Augustus,  but  no 
power.     Germany  was  ruled  by  its  princes  —  kings, 
dukes,  grand  dukes,  bishops,  knights  — each  absolute 
in  his  own  domain,  the  only  exceptions  to  this  miscel- 
lany of  autocracy  being  the  thirty  free  cities.     There 
was  no  room  for  national  feeling  or  for  patriotism. 
"Of  love  of  country,"  said  Lessing,  "  I  have  no  con- 
ception.   To  me  it  seems  at  best  but  an  heroic  weak- 
ness which  I  am  right  glad  to  be  without." 

If  any  German  of  that  time  could  have  been  led  to 
speculate  on  the  question  of  national  unity  he  might 


THE  BASIS  OF  GERMAN   NATIONAL  LIFE 


6l 


have  considered  three  possibilities  —  voluntary  feder- 
ation, forcible  union  under  the  Hapsburgs,  forcible 
union  under  the  Hohenzollems.  The  first  he  would 
have  dismissed  at  once  as  inconceivable.  The  second 
was  conceivable,  given  a  pre-eminent  political  and  mil- 
itary genius,  but  it  would  mean  another  Thirty  Years' 
War  and  would  be  regarded  as  a  supreme  disaster  by 
every  German  outside  of  Austria.  The  third  was  even 
less  likely.  Prussia,  it  is  true,  was  i^'ot  handicapped  as 
was  Austria  by  a  great  non-German  population ;  apart 
from  her  Polish  subjects  she  was  a  German  state; 
but  in  the  eighteenth  century  this  was  a  matter  of  in- 
difference. Austria's  Slavic  and  Magyar  subjects 
formed  just  as  good  tax-payers  and  soldiers  as  her 
Germans ;  all  were  alike  pawns  to  be  played  as  Vienna 
willed ;  and  under  normally  equal  leadership  Austria's 
power  was  greater  than  that  of  Prussia.  Still  Fred- 
erick the  Great  had  shown  that  genius  could  wipe  out 
the  difference  in  man-power  and  wealth,  and  Prussia 
was  at  least  a  possibility  as  the  mistress  of  Germany. 
A  bare  possibility,  however;  even  Frederick  had  not 
attempted  :;  i  adventure  which  would  have  united 
against  him  .  U  his  neighbors.  On  the  whole,  German 
unity  was  not  even  a  dream,  not  even  desired,  not  an 
element  in  pr?.ctical  or  even  Utopian  politics. 
But  on  the  other  hand  if  since  thtre  was  no  German 


Tr^--^~rmm 


62 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


.  I  ', 


nat,on     there  was  no  room  for  national  patriotism 
there  was  much  room  for  pride  of  race.     The  German 
could  look  back  to  at  least  two  eras  in  which  his  people 
nad  figured  m  the  world  with  honor  and  power      One 
was  the  age  of  the  Hanseatic  League,  when  German 
merchants  were  lords  of  the  Baltic,  when  they  prac- 
tically controlled  the  trade  of  northern  Europe  and  ex- 
tended  their  influence  far  south  to  the  Mediterranean 
when  the  German  cities  had  freed  themselves  from  the 
rule  of  the  princes  and  had  no  equals  in  power  and 
wealth  outside  of  Italy.     And  the  other  was  the  age 
of  Luther,  when  the  friar  of  Wittemberg  raided  his 
banner  of  revolt  against  papal  domination.     The  Han- 
seatic League  had  lost  its  proud  greatness  by  the  end 
of  the  fifteenth  century,  and  the  followers  of  Luther 
had  withm  two  generations  forgotten  his  noble  faith 
and  thrown  away  their  great  opportunity  in  political 
and  sectarian  quarrels.     But  the  race  that  had  pro- 
duced the  merchant  princes  of  Lubeck  and  the  reform- 
ers of  the  sixteenth  century  could  surely  not  thereafter 
remam  barren.     Nor  indeed  had  it  remained  barren 
Mozart  and  Beethoven  were  both  living  in  1789  rep- 
resentatives of  a  movement  deep,  broad,  and  full  of 
splendor.     We  cannot  discuss  here  the  contribution  of 
music  -  the  one  debt  of  the  worM  to  Germany  that  is 


THE  BASIS  OF   GERMAN    NATIONAL  LIFE 


63 


least  disputed.  It  was  another  proof  of  a  many-sided 
and  fruitful  genius.  Vet  like  the  greatness  of  the 
Hansa,  Uke  the  greatness  of  Luther  and  his  contem- 
poraries, so  the  greatness  of  the  masters  of  music  had 
nothing  to  do  with  national  unity.  They  were  Ger- 
mans, but  in  a  very  true  sense  they  were  men  without  a 
country. 

Of  all  the  social  movements  in  Germany  before  the 
nineteenth  century  the  Reformation  is,  no  doubt,  the 
most  instructive.  As  far  as  Cierman  unity  was  con- 
cerned it  had  held  out  the  greatest  promise  and  had  re> 
suited  in  the  most  discouraging  failure.  It  had  ended 
in  the  shattering  disaster  of  the  Thirty  Years'  War. 
But  the  calamities  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  cen- 
turies were  traceable  to  a  single  cause  —  an  utter  lack 
of  solidarity  on  the  part  of  the  people  of  which  politi- 
cal disunion  was  only  the  most  visible  sign.  The  very 
definiteness  of  the  evil  was  a  warning  that  might,  if 
the  evil  were  not  too  deep-seated,  lead  to  a  remedy. 
Moreover  this  lack  of  solidarity  had,  one  might  think, 
a  certain  element  of  promise  in  its  resentment  of  ex- 
ternal control,  its  vigorous  individualism.  And  there 
was  added  to  this  individualism  a  high  moral  princi- 
ple to  which  Luther  gave  powerful  expression  and 
which  did  not  die  with  him  —  the  principle  of  service 
and  duty,  long  held  to  be  peculiarly  German.  "  A 
Christian  man  is  the  freest  of  all,  and  subject  to  none. 


/ 


64  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

A  Christian  man  is  the  most  dutiful  servant  of  z\\  and 
subject  to  every  one."     These  are  the  tw. .  propositions 
with  which  Luther  began  his  ts.y  On  the  Liberty  of  a 
Chnsttan  Man.     This  emphasis  of  mdividuahsm  and 
of  the  moral  law  may  seem  curious  to  those  who  think 
only  of  the  Germany  of  recent  years,  but  it  will  seem 
less  so  after  a  little  rejection,  and  in  any  case  we  are 
dealing  at  present  with  the  older  Germany.     The  "  an- 
cient  German  freedom  "  and  "  German  honesty  and 
kindliness  "  were  commonplace  phrases  not  so  long 
ago,  and  few  observers  doubted  their  essential  truth 
Moreover,  Luther  expressed  in  the  most   funda- 
mental article  of  his  religious  revolt,  another  element 
which  was  characteristically  German  and  was  deeply 
significant  for  both  good  and  ill.     We  refer  to  his  re- 
vival and  emphasis  of  the  doctrine  of  justification  by 
faith.     We  must  not  examine  this  too  closely,  nor 
must  we  insist  too  absolutely  on  consistency  in  ap- 
plication.    But  the  essential  principle  involved  in  jus- 
tification  by   faith  is  unmistakable.     It  meant  pro- 
test   against    the    doctrine    of     salvation     through 
externals  —  indulgences,     penance,     priestly     absolu- 
tion,  dispensations   or   anything  of   the  sort  — and 
the     emphasis    of    direct    communion    with     God. 
Carried    to    its  logical    conclusion    this    would   nat- 
urally lead  to  the  dissolution  of  any  kind  of  imposed 
creeds  or  rules  of  conduct,  and  just  as  naturally  the 


THE  BASIS  OF   GERMAX    NATIONAL  LIFE 


65 


doctrine  was  not  usually  pushed  so  far.  But  the  im- 
plication was  there,  nevertheless,  and  tlic  tendency.  It 
is  related  on  the  one  hand  to  the  German  mysticism  of 
the  Middle  Ages  and  on  the  other  to  the  idealism  of 
Kant  and  his  successors.  And  the  mental  attitu  ' .  in- 
volved was  what  was  meant  when  the  Germans  were 
described  as  the  most  religions  of  all  the  peoples  of 
Europe.  Hegel  summed  it  up  exactly  when  he  re- 
ferred to  the  "  ancient  and  constantly  preserved  in- 
wardness of  the  German  people." 

So  that  a  Gernian  of  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury could  find  not  only  pride  in  the  memory  of  the 
Hanseatic  merchants  and  of  Luther,  in  the  glc:^  of 
Bach  and  Handel,  but  a  real  st.  ndard  for  estimating 
the  capacities  and  character  of  his  people  Music 
was  in  a  class  of  its  own,  ditficult  to  analyze  in  its  re- 
lation to  the  actual  world  but  of  unquestioned  power 
and  value.  The  Hansa  and  Luther  in  different  ways 
exemplified  the  essential  quality  of  practical  initiative 
—  the  merchants  in  asserting  and  winning  independ- 
ence and  in  making  for  themselves  a  great  place  in 
the  commercial  world,  the  reformer  in  throwing  off  the 
control  of  an  ecclesiastical  bondage  of  immense  power. 
And  Luther  furthermore  expressed  three  things  that 
were  held  for  ages  to  be  fundamental  elements  of  the 
German  character  —  spiritual  freedom,  the  sense  of 
duty,  and  "  inwardness,"  the  feeling  that  the  kingdom 


C6 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


of  God,  i.  e.,  all  wisdom  and  truth,  is  within  you. 
So  much  for  the  things  in  which  our  imaginary  Ger- 
man of  1789  might  reasonably  take  some  pride  and 
comfort.  But  he  might  or  might  not  have  seen  a  cer- 
tain terrible  and  permanent  significance  in  the  age  that 
followed  the  Diet  of  Worms.  Luther  had  freed  Ger- 
many from  an  external  religious  authority.  He  had 
substituted  the  authority  of  God  alone,  revealed  by 
faith  with  the  aid  of  God's  word,  the  Bible.  And 
then  was  seen  a  curious  thing.  The  Germans,  follow- 
ing their  inner  light,  became  split  into  sects,  more  in- 
tolerant as  Protestants  than  they  had  ever  been  as  Cath- 
olics, intent  on  minute  points  of  doctrine  and  disci- 
pline, divided  and  dogmatic,  superstitious  and  cruel. 
Their  "  inwardness  "  had  betrayed  them.  Each  one 
his  own  prophet,  they  displayed  a  fanaticism  for  the 
subjective  religion  framed  in  their  own  inner  con- 
sciousness that  they  had  ne\'er  shown  for  the  more  ex- 
ternal religion  that  they  had  learned  from  Rome. 
Justification  by  faith  implied  liberty  and  service, 
Luther  had  said.  The  Germans  made  it  imply  intoler- 
ance and  formalism.  This  "  religio-ethical  disease," 
as  Professor  Pfleiderer  calls  it,  was  simply  the  out- 
growth of  a  tendency  to  intense  introspection  that  is 
faiih  caricatured  and  become  pathological,  an  arrogant 
confidence  in  one's  own  broodini^^s,  a  friith  that  despises 
experience  and  regards  the  wisdom  of  others  as  Satanic 


THE  BASIS  OF   GERMAN    NATIONAL  LIFE 


67 


if  it  denies  the  glory  of  the  idea  evolved  from  the  indi- 
vidual soul.  And  it  is  well  to  keep  this  in  mind  when 
we  try  to  understand  the  modern  German  —  the  sub- 
jective idealism,  the  easy  mastery  by  an  idea,  of  one 
who  will  fight  and  die  in  indignant  protest  against  an 
external  authority. 

From  the  Reformation  to  the  middle  of  the  eight- 
eenth  century   individualism  held   sway  in   German 
thought.     We  do  not  speak  of    German  politics  be- 
cause the  government  of  the  German  states  was  every- 
where autocratic  and  because  political  life  did  not  exist 
as  a  national    function.     As  always  under  an  auto- 
cratic regime  there  were  good  rulers  and  bad,  but  in 
either  case  government  was  wholly  the  affair  of  the 
prince.     The  Germany  of  our  time,  the  Cierman  na- 
tion, was  still  an  unfused  mass,  and  the  German  char- 
acter was  to  be  seen  only  in  fields  other  than  politics. 
But  so  far  as  it  could  be  estimated  one  could  only  say 
that  the  political  divisions  faithfully  reflected  the  state 
of  the  German  niinrl  —  the  individualism  that  had  ex- 
pressed itself  in  the  Lutheran  revolt  reinforced  by  the 
spiritual  arrogance,  sectarianism  and  formalism  that 
characterized  Protestantism  after  Luther.     Not  that 
this  unhappy  aftermath  of  the  Reformation  was  uni- 
versal; there  were  some  —  the  Moravians,   for  ex- 
ample—  who  stood  'aithfully  for  a  living  and  spir- 
itual religious  life;  but  these  were  the  minority.     Un- 


68 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


t 


til  at  last  the  German  mind  began  to  grow  restive 
again,  to  give  signs  that  it  was  about  to  break  its  self- 
imposed  yoke  of  narrow  externalism  and  fruitless 
pride  in  petty  things.  The  beginning  of  the  change 
was  seen  in  Wieland  and  Lessing.  And  then  the  out- 
burst came  in  Jazzling  glory  with  the  age  of  Herder, 
Kant  and  Goethe. 

With  the  last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  Ger- 
many entered  on  a  new  era.  It  would  be  untrue  to 
say  that  either  individualism  or  subjectiveness  disap- 
peared; indeed  both  became  stronger  than  ever;  but 
from  whatever  source  there  entered  into  German 
thought  a  new  and  immense  vitality.  It  sought  at 
first  no  expression  in  national  unity,  nor  did  it  greatly 
concern  itself  with  politics,  though  time  and  again 
there  were  signs  that  poets  and  thinkers  were  eyeing 
resentfully,  with  only  half-restrained  bitterness,  the 
corruption  of  courts  and  the  irresponsibility  of  the 
princes.  But  while  there  was  in  Germany  none  of  the 
revolutionary  spirit  voiced  in  France  by  Voltaire  and 
Rousseau,  there  was  a  vigor,  a  penetrating  vision  of 
reality,  a  breadth  of  interest  in  all  aspects  of  life  that 
was  bound  to  aft  as  a  spiritual  stimulus  and  tonic  to  the 
German  people.  The  petfirsess,  the  morbid  introspec- 
tion and  the  formalism  of  the  seventeenth  and  early 
eighteenth  centuries  gave  place  ♦o  a  wide  enthusiasm 
for  all  things  human.     And  forms,  whether  of  reli- 


i 


THE  BASIS  OF   GERMAN   NATIONAL  LIFE  69 

gion,  poetry  or  politics  were  viewed  as  living  embod- 
iments of  the  organic  forces  that  had  created  them. 
New  life  always  brings  the  possibility  of  revolution  if 
the  enclosing  forms  endeavor  to  restrain  and  smother 
it.  But  in  this  case  if  the  possibility  existed  it  did  not 
show  itself,  or  at  any  rate  it  developed  slowly;  for  the 
leaders  of  the  revival  were  not  particularly  interested 
in  politics,  and  their  work  in  literature  and  philosophy 
was  allowed  to  go  on  without  interference ;  indeed  it 
was  encouraged  by  the  princes,  since  it  did  not  menace 
their  privileges  and  did  add  to  their  glory. 

It  would  be  an  impertinence  to  attempt  in  the  space 
at  our  disposal  to  discuss  one  of  the  golden  ages  of  the 
world's  literature  and  reflection.     No  one  word  or 
phrase  will  describe  even  the  general  tendencies  that 
were  represented  by  Kant,  Fichte,  Goethe,  Schiller  and 
their  contemporaries.     But  if  we  might  select  one  ele- 
ment in  it  all  that  was  most  permanent,  most  pro- 
foundly German,  and  most  powerful  in  its  effect  on 
German  thought,  we  should  certainly  name  idealism. 
Akin,  no  doubt,  to  the  same  subjectivism,  the  sam... 
"  inwardness  "  that  had  clouded  the  German  mind  in 
the  sixteenth  century  it  came  this  time  not  as  an  ob- 
scuring or  disintegrating  force  but  as  a  prophetic  in- 
terpretation of  life  that  aflfected  the  thought  of  the 
whole  world.     Later  on  indeed,  as  we  shall  see,  it  in- 
volved a  lapse  into  idea-worship  that  might  induce  mis- 


I  i' 


70  RECONSTRUCTION   AND  NATIONAL   LIFE 

givings,  but  not  at  once.  For  the  moment  at  least  it 
was  part  of  a  magnificent  effort  to  survey  the  whole 
world,  to  break  all  spiritual  bonds,  to  clear  away  all  ob- 
stacles of  myth,  prejudice  and  blindness  that  might 
conceal  the  truth,  and  to  find  the  keys  alike  to  the  hu- 
man heart  and  to  the  ultimate  secrets  of  life. 

Before  we  go  farther  we  must  clear  up  one  possible 
source  of  confusion.  We  have  already  used  the  word 
"  idealism  "  in  relation  to  France;  we  shall  use  it  again 
in  relation  to  England ;  and  here  we  are  using  it  in  rela- 
tion to  Germany.  And  not  only  is  it  used  in  three  dif- 
ferent senses  in  the  three  connections,  but  none  of  them 
quite  correspond  to  its  use  in  all  languages  to  describe 
the  famous  doctrine  of  Plato. 

Idealism  is  a  Greek  word  and  Plato's  philosophy 
gives  us  the  one  root  from  which  the  different  mean- 
ings of  the  word  have  sprung.  To  state  it  briefly 
Plato's  idealism  represented  belief  in  absolute  reality, 
absolute  truth,  as  against  the  apparent  reality  perceived 
by  our  senses.  The  world  of  appearances,  the  world 
we  see  and  touch,  is  only  a  semblance;  it  appears  and 
disappears,  it  is  solid  or  a  mirage,  it  may  be  as  vivid  in 
the  phantasms  of  a  dream  or  of  delirium  as  in  the  ap- 
parent certainty  of  our  ordinary  sensation,  it  changes 
its  aspects,  crumbles  to  dust,  dissolves  into  impalpable 
gases,  appears  miraculously  from  seed  or  with  a 
change  of  temperature,  disappears  just  as  miracu- 


THE  BASIS  OF   GERMAN   NATIONAL  LIFE 


71 


lously  at  the  touch  of  seen  or  unseen  forces  of 
disintegration;  it  is,  in  short,  a  world  of  phe- 
nomena, of  apptit^ ranees,  not  of  reality.  Yet  at  the 
same  time  it  is  a  kind  of  parable,  an  allegory,  conceal- 
ing and  showing  forth  the  truth  as  the  body  of  man 
conceals  and  reveals  his  spirit.  The  great  ruler  of  this 
visible  world,  the  center  and  indispensable  element  in 
it,  is  the  Sun,  without  which  life  would  cease.  Simi- 
larly in  the  real  though  invisible  world  of  ideas  there 
is  a  Sun,  the  center  and  source  of  all  that  is  good,  all 
truth  and  all  life.  The  eternal  search  of  the  man  seek- 
ing for  wisdom  is  the  search  for  more  knowledge  of 
this  real  world,  and  the  ultimate  wisdom  is  knowledge 
of  what  Plato  calls  the  Form  of  Good,  the  ideal  Sun, 
so  to  speak,  which  —  if  we  like  —  we  may  translate 
God} 

Now  all  idealism  is  based  on  this  conviction  that  the 
world  of  phenomena,  the  world  of  which  our  physical 

^"The  essential  Form  of  the  Good  is  the  highest  object  of 
knowledge,  and  this  essence,  by  permeating  all  created  objects, 
gives  them  their  value.  And  if  we  know  everything  else  per- 
fectly without  knowing  this  essence  it  will  profit  us  nothing." 
Plato,  Republic,  505.  "  In  the  world  of  knowledge  the  essential 
Form  of  Good  is  the  limit  of  our  inquiries  and  can  barely  be 
perceived;  but,  when  perceived,  we  cannot  help  concluding  that 
it  is  in  every  case  the  source  of  all  that  is  bright  and  beautiful, — 
in  the  visible  world  giving  birth  to  light  and  its  master,  and  in 
the  intellectual  world  dispensing,  immediately  and  with  full  au- 
thority, truth  and  reason."  Republic,  517.  Cf.  "Seek  ye  first 
the  kingdom  of  God  and  His  righteousness,  and  all  these  other 
things  shall  be  added  unto  you." 


y2  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

senses  tell  us,  is  not  everything,  but  that  there  is  a  much 
more  real  and  important  world  that  we  can  neither  see 
nor  touch,  that  we  can  apprehend  only  with  our  mind, 
with  our  spiritual  sense.  ^  But  this  faith  has  taken 
various  forms.  The  German  tends  to  seek  God  and 
truth  in  his  own  soul,  made  in  God's  image  and  hold- 
ing all  truth  in  itself  even  more  truly  than  the  tree  is 
contained  in  the  seed.  The  French  tendency  is  more 
objective,  to  see  in  a  creed,  an  institution  or  a  gospel 
the  visible  formulation  of  an  eternal  truth  and  to  fol- 
low it  with  passionate  loyalty.  The  English  tendency 
is  also  objective,  but  his  idealism  is  based  on  experi- 
ence and  he  follows  it  cautiously,  only  believing  it  as 
he  sees  it  embodied  in  fruitful  form.  Such  a  distinc- 
tion is  indeed  approximate  rather  than  absolute,  but  it 
is  in  the  main  a  true  one. 

It  may  be  prejudice  that  leads  us  to  consider  the 
English  idealism  the  least  dangerous  of  these,  the  least 
open  to  fanaticism.  But  we  may  balance  such  a  state- 
ment by  admitting  that  the  German  and  the  French 
will  take  mankind  to  higher  levels,  untrammeled  as 
they  are  by  the  English  insistence  on  solid  standing 
ground.  At  all  events  it  seems  that  the  world  needs 
all  three,  and  the  practical  English  speaking  world  has 

1  For  example,  we  cannot  see  or  touch  a  scientific  law  We 
may  see  the  results  of  the  law  of  gravitation  and  the  laws  of 
motion,  but  we  cannot  see  the  laws  themselves. 


■i 


THE   BASIS   OF  GERMAN   NATIONAL  LIFE  73 

willingly  acknowledged  its  debt  to  the  more  daring 
flights  of  the  French  and  German  mind.  But  French 
idealism  is  easier  for  the  average  Englishman  or  Amer- 
ican to  understand  than  German.  And  when  we  do 
adopt  German  idealism  in  our  thinking  it  is  strongly 
modified  by  our  conscious  or  unconscious  pragmatism 
—  our  wish  to  see  in  an  idea  and  a  faith  some  definite 
bearing  on  actual  life,  some  solid  foundation  in  expe- 
rience. 

Yet  we  must  at  least  try  to  understand  the  working 
of  the  subjective  idealism  that  is  so  potent  in  the  Teu- 
tonic mind.  We  shall  not  venture  on  a  discussion  of 
the  philosophy  of  Kant  or  the  development  of  what  is 
known  as  transcendental  idealism,  but  we  may  see  how 
it  acts  in  certain  concrete  instances.  So  it  will  be  our 
task  in  the  following  chapter  to  study  the  German 
theory  of  the  State  and  the  modern  social  and  economic 
Protestantism  that  has  expressed  itself  in  Marxian  So- 
calism  and  the  Social  Democracy.  In  these  we  may 
see  the  principles  that  we  have  been  discussing  —  indi- 
vidualism, the  sense  of  duty,  idealism  —  taking  form 
in  movements  that  have  become  potent  factors  in  the 
modern  world. 


V 


Idealism  in  German  Polittcs 

We  have  found  that  two  historical  facts  could  be  as- 
serted regarding  the  Germans  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury and  the  early  nineteenth:  in  the  first  place  they 
had  been  for  centuries  politically  divided  and  ruled 
by  despots  ranging  in  power  from  the  king  of  Prussia 
to  petty  knights  whose  domain  was  limited  to  a  castle 
or  a  village  —  a  long  and  severe  training  in  submis- 
siveness;  in  the  second  place  they  had  at  one  time  or 
another  proved  their  capacity  for  trade  and  collective 
action,  for  spiritual  initiative,  and  for  achievements  of 
the  first  rank  in  literature,  philosophy,  and  certain  fields 
of  art.  We  have  found  also  that  at  least  three  German 
characteristics  could  be  noted  as  apparently  deep-seated 
—  spiritual  individualism,  the  sense  of  duty,  and  sub- 
jectiveness.  The  first  and  third  of  these  characteristics 
might  seem  at  times  to  be  identical,  but  they  were  not 
necessarily  so,  and  the  acceptance  of  a  subjective  ideal 
might  even  lead  to  the  temporary  submergence  of  their 
individualism,  might  secure  the  full  alliance  of  the 

74 


IDEALISM    IN   GERMAN    POLITICS 


75 


sense  of  duty,  and  result  in  an  overwhelming  religious 
or  political  fanaticism.  The  result  of  German  his- 
tory and  the  working  of  the  German  mind  had  been 
disunion,  the  alternation  of  mighty  assertiveness  and 
lamentable  collapse,  and  yet  the  assurance  of  great 
natural  capacity. 

We  have  now  to  see  whether  these  characteristics 
persisted  during  the  period  from  the  Napoleonic 
era  to  the  present,  and  if  so  how  they  reacted  to  the 
modern  world  and  its  problems.  And  we  shall  try  to 
answer  these  questions  by  studying  the  modern  theory 
of  the  state  and  by  noting  the  character  of  the  revolu- 
tionary movement  known  as  socialism.  Both  of  these 
are  essentially  idealistic.  Yet  both  illustrate  the  Ger- 
man paradox  of  intense  concentration  on  the  practical 
combined  with  equally  intense  worship  of  an  idea. 
They  are  no  more  characteristic  and  no  more  instruc- 
tive than  the  history  of  German  education  or  of  Ger- 
man industry.  But  they  have  a  very  direct  signifi- 
cance for  our  purpose.  In  our  study  of  nineteenth 
century  France  we  selected  for  discussion  certain  non- 
political  aspects  of  the  national  life  because  these 
seemed  more  distinctive,  more  characteristic  and  more 
fruitful  than  any  movement  in  French  politics.  But 
even  the  sides  of  modern  German  life  that  are  not  di- 
rectly political  have  been  so  largely  dominated  by  in- 
tense nationalism  that  political  thought  and  political 


76  RECONSTRU{  TION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

leaders  have  had  a  power  and  influence  unprecedented 
in  Germany  itself  and  quite  without  any  parallel  in  tlie 
modern  world.  Yet  there  has  been  no  real  break. 
Modern  Germany  is  the  older  Germany  in  a  new 
aspect. 

To  the  average  Englishman  or  American  a  theory  of 
the  State  is  something  academic,  having  little  or  no  re- 
lation to  practical  politics.     If  forced  to  do  so  an  Eng- 
lishman could  doubtless  formulate  a  theory,  and  if  he 
did  it  would  be  based  on  specific  fa'-ts  of  experience, 
Magna  Carta,  the  Petition  of  Right,  the  seventeenth 
century  revolution.     He  might  tell  us,  perhaps,  that 
the  State    was  the  people  organized  for  collective  ac- 
tion,  for  government  and  defense,   for  the  mainte- 
nace  of  law  and  order,  for  protection  against  menace 
from  without  and  disruption  from  within,  its  prime 
requisites  Ijeing  strength  on  the  one  hand  and  freedom 
on  the  other.     Its  purpose  and  basis  is  individualis- 
tic, no  matter  how  stmng  the  national  consciousness, 
how  deep  the  unanalyzed  love  for  England  as  Eng- 
land.    Similarly  the  American  might  base  his  theory 
of  the  State  on  the  Declaration  of  Independence  and 
the  Constitution.     But  except  for  argumentative  and 
rhetorical  purposes  the -Englishman  and  the  American 
alike  would  formulate  his  theory  reluctantly  and  with 
difficulty.     His  devotion  to  England  or  the  United 
States  does  not  depend  on  a  philosophy  or  on  a  formal 


IDEAUSM    IN   GERMAN    POLITICS 


77 


definition,  and  the  warmth  of  his  patriotism  neither 
cools  nor  deepens  with  the  framing  of  a  political  creed 
or  the  working  out  of  a  political  philosophy. 

With  the  German  it  is  otherwise.  In  the  old  days 
of  division  and  despotism  no  theory  of  the  state  mat- 
tered, for  the  state  was  its  prince,  and  according  to  the 
old  maxim  what  pleased  the  prince  had  the  force  of 
law.  But  even  then  a  thinker  or  a  dreamer  might  try 
to  ask  himself  questions  about  the  real  basis  and  rea- 
son of  social  life.  The  social  contract  idea  had  been 
familiar  in  European  thought  for  generations  before  it 
was  made  famous  and  dynamic  by  Rousseau,  but  it  re- 
mained academic  in  Germany  as  in  England.  The 
formula  of  "  liberty,  equality  and  fraternity  "  that  was 
so  full  of  inspiring  grandeur  to  the  Frenchman  awak- 
ened but  a  cold  response  east  of  the  Rhine.  Abstract 
liberty  meant  little  to  the  German,  and  equality  even 
less.  What  he  sought  was  some  explanation  for  the 
state  that  could  satisfy  his  reason  more  adequately, 
that  would  be  at  the  same  time  more  philosophical  and 
more  practical.  And  this  he  found  in  the  organic 
theory  of  the  state. 

Gradually  developed  in  the  later  years  of  the  eight- 
eenth century  the  theory  of  the  state  as  an  organism 
was  fully  stated  by  Hegel  in  his  Philosophy  of  Right 
(1821)  and  it  has  had  a  power  in  Germany  ever  since 
that  other  peoples  find  it  difficult  to  comprehend.     It 


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78 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL    LIFE 


was  not  original  with  Hegel  or  with  any  other  German 
thinker;  it  was  based  on  Plato  and  Aristotle;  but  the 
Greek  theory  was  like  a  seed  planted  in  fertile  soil,  and 
it  grew  there  until  it  became  all-controlling.  It  was 
an  idea  that  could  be  worked  out  in  a  philosopher's 
study  by  reflection,  a  half-truth  that  to  other  peoples 
was  an  interesting  and  fruitful  suggestion  but  an  ab- 
straction, not  to  be  taken  as  a  complete  statement  of 
the  truth.  But  the  Germans  with  their  love  for  in 
idea  evolved  from  thought  and  with  their  ancient  ina- 
bility to  see  life  as  a  whole,  adopted  the  organic  theory, 
applied  it  to  their  own  poHtical  life,  and  saw  nothing 
else. 

Its  basis  is  the  proposition  that  man  is  essentially  a 
social  being,  that  man  as  an  individual,  i.  e.,  man  apart 
from  society,  does  not  and  cannot  exist.  Individual 
liberty  is  a  myth;  there  is  no  such  thing;  liberty  can 
only  be  social,  and  the  man  who  tries  to  realize  liberty 
apart  from  society  will  find  himself  degenerating  to  the 
level  of  the  lower  animals.  As  a  rational  being  he  is 
a  member  of  a  society,  and  the  State  is  the  form,  the 
body,  the  actual  realization  of  this  rational,  social 
freedom.  The  State  is  then  an  organism  just  as  truly 
as  a  tree  or  a  man  is  an  organism,  only  it  is  a  higher 
form.  The  man  is  a  more  perfect  organism  than  the 
horse  or  the  lion ;  but  the  State  is  a  more  perfect  or- 
ganism still.     And  as  the  leaves  and  branches  of  a  tree 


IDEALISM   IN   GERMAN   POLITICS 


79 


have  no  meaning  apart  from  the  tree,  as  the  fingers 
and  bones  of  a  man  have  no  meaning  apart  from  the 
man,  so  the  merchants,  the  farmers,  all  men  whatso- 
ever have  no  meaning  apart  from  the  body  politic  — 
the  supreme  organism  of  the  State.  This  was  laid  down 
in  Aristotle,  it  was  illustrated  by  Rousseau  and  Herder, 
it  was  accepted  as  part  of  his  whole  system  of  ideal- 
istic philosophy  by  Hegel.  And  it  was  adopted  by  the 
Germans  just  at  the  time  when  the  pressure  of  painful 
facts  predisposed  them  to  some  theory  that  would 
crystallize  and  rationalize  thjeir  newly  awakened 
dreams  of  unity. 

For  the  Napoleonic  wars  had  shattered  the  political 
system  of  Germany.  Napoleon  had  crushed  Austria 
and  Prussia,  had  swept  scores  of  petty  princes  from 
their  thrones,  had  formed  new  combinations,  had  an- 
nexed some  of  the  old  principalities  to  France,  given 
others  to  princes  who  were  disposed  to  be  friendly  to 
the  invader,  had  ended  the  shadowy  Empire  with  its 
traditions  of  Charlemagne  and  Frederick  Barbarossa, 
and  had  imposed  his  will  on  Berlin  and  Vienna,  carv- 
ing and  recarving,  exacting  tribute  and  distributing  fa- 
vors or  punishment  as  his  sovereign  will  dictated. 
Thoughtful  Germans  watched  with  grief  the  humil- 
iation of  the  German  name  —  a  name  so  highly  hon- 
ored in  philosophy,  literature  and  art,  now  so  shamed 
in  the  field  of  politics.     A  new  sense  of  patriotism  was 


8o 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


awakened  by  the  sword  of  a  foreign  conqueror,  J'ld 
the  War  of  Liberation  that  finally  drove  th.  Fr  ncn 
armies  across  the  Rhine  was  the  first  sign  oi  the  possi- 
bility of  a  united  Germany.  But  if  Napoleon's  fall 
and  the  Congress  of  Vienna  brought  no  attempt  to  re- 
vive the  myriad  principalities  of  the  past  it  brought 
no  real  union.  The  dawn  and  triumph  of  German  pa- 
triotism had  left  the  Gc  an  people  with  a  sense  of  un- 
fulfillment.  And  the  iota  of  the  State  as  an  organism 
came  as  a  gleam  of  light. 

Moreover  it  was  applied  definitely  to  Prussia  as  a 
state  that  was  already  well  on  the  way  to  maturity,  the 
object  lesson  thai  showed  their  manifest  destiny  to  the 
German  people.  Indeed  all  of  the  German  states  were 
to  Hegel  farther  on  the  road  to  spiritual  freedom  than, 
for  instance,  France.  For  France  was  led  astray  by 
her  false  notion  of  equality,  a  notion  utterly  irrecon- 
cilable with  the  conception  of  the  State  as  organic. 
The  equality  of  fingers  and  eyes  with  heart  and  brain 
is  an  absurdity.  The  equality  of  men  is  just  as  absurd. 
Not  only  is  it  impossible  to  icconcile  with  facts  but  it 
involves  the  striving  toward  .  wrong  goal.  Each  man 
is  most  free  when  he  is  best  fulfilling  his  function  as  a 
member  of  the  State.  If  God  has  made  him  a  me- 
chanic he  should  no  more  seek  to  be  a  statesman  or  a 
bank-president  than  the  foot  should  seek  to  be  an  eye. 
And  the  same  line  of  thought  threw  new  light  on  the 


IDEALISM    IN   GERMAN    POLITICS 


8l 


conception  of  duty.  The  firmly  entrenched  principle 
of  a  moral  law  was  given  a  new  and  rational  sanction. 
That  was  right  which  was  in  harmony  with  the  whole 
organism,  and  the  way  was  paved  for  the  belief  that 
what  the  State  orders  is  beyond  argument,  a  "  categori- 
cal imperative."  For  the  State  is  the  embodiment  of 
the  social  conscience  as  well  as  of  the  social  reason  and 
social  liberty.  Not  that  the  moral,  rational  and  free 
individual  does  not  still  exist ;  but  individualism  itself 
has  meaning  and  value  only  in  relation  to  the  super- 
organism  of  which  the  individual  is  a  functioning  part. 
The  individual  and  society  are  terms  unintelligible  ex- 
cept in  relation  to  one  another.* 

As  the  nineteenth  century  went  on  it  brought 
a  steady  rise  in  the  influence  and  power  of  Prussia, 
and  a  steady  trend  toward  an  emphasis  of  the  practical 
that  was  a  new  thing  in  German  life.  Voltaire's  re- 
mark that  France  aimed  at  the  sovereignty  of  the  land, 
England  of  the  sea,  Germany  of  the  clouds,  lost  its 
point.  German  perspective  gradually  altered,  and  of 
the  new  tendency  in  the  direction  of  practical  efficiency 
Prussia  was  the  embodiment.  Even  before  Bismarck, 
von  Roon  and  von  Moltke  had  completed  the  incom- 
parable political  and  military  machine  which  struck 
down  Austria  in  1866  and  France  in  1870-1,  and  be- 

iSee  the  clear  and  specific   statement  of  this   in   Bluntschli, 
Theory  of  the  State,  bk.  i,  ch.  i  (Oxford,  Clarendon  Press,  189S). 


82 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


fore  the  rising  spirit  of  nationality  had  found  its  form 
in  the  German  Empire,  the  organic  theory  of  the  State 
had  begun  to  fade  and  a  new  one  to  appear.     The  idea 
of  the  State  as  an  organism  had  indeed  sunk  so  deeply 
into  the  German  mind  that  its  essential  elements  sur- 
vived and  were  carried  on  into  the  new  theory.     But 
to  the  vigorous  and  impatient  minds  of  Bismarck  and 
his  supporters  the  organic  idea  had  in  it  too  much  fa- 
talism  tended  too  much  to  make  men  let  events  *ake 
their  course.*     An  organism  grows  by  inner  life,  not 
by   coercion   and   conscious    construction.     And   the 
Prussians  were  eager  to  give  German  nationality  im- 
mediate realization  in  a  form  that  would  brinr  glory, 
power,  and  leadership  not  in  the  clouds  but  in  the  ac- 
tual world.     To  the  German  thinkers  of  the  sixties, 
the  seventies  and  increasingly  during  the  decades  pre- 
ceding the  war  the  State  was  not  an  organism  but  a 
structure ;  or  rather  it  was  both,  and  its  supreme  qual- 
ity was  Power.     Der  Staat  ist  Macht. 

The  difference  is  the  difference  between  the  words 
organism  and  organisation.  And  the  change  was  not 
simply  the  thinking  out  of  a  new  philosophy  but  the 
reflection  of  Germany  s  new  and  intense  national 
spirit.  The  people  so  long  divided  longed  for  unity; 
they  looked  resentfully  on  a  past  of  impotence  and 
longed  for  a  chance  to  emulate  France  and  England  in 
iTreitschke,  Politics,  vol.  i,  c.  i. 


IDEALISM   IN    GERMAN    POLITICS 


83 


the  fascinating  arena  of  world  politics.  National  pa- 
triotism meant  national  ambition,  and  Prussia  with  her 
"  discovery  of  organization  "  was  the  obvious  leader 
in  the  new  quest.  Individually  powerless,  powerless 
also  in  their  separate  states,  the  Germans  threw  their 
immense  capacity  for  concentration  into  the  realization 
of  a  state  that  should  be  the  whole  German  people  or- 
ganized in  a  political,  economic  and  cultural  unit.  All 
that  we  have  said  regarding  liberty  anu  equality  in  a 
state  conceived  as  an  organism  would  apply  still.  The 
individual  liberty  and  equality  of  the  piston  and  the 
fly-wheel,  of  the  leaf  and  the  bark,  of  the  foot  and  the 
hand  are  no  more  absurd  than  the  liberty  and  equality 
of  men  as  the  French  or  the  Americans  conceive  them 
in  a  perfectly  organized  state. 

And  most  Germans  accepted  this  with  willing  enthu- 
siasm. Their  old  individualism  was  merged  in  the 
new  nationalism,  heir  old  sense  of  duty  was  satisfied 
by  the  conviction  that  the  vo.je  of  the  State  was  the 
voice  of  God,  and  their  old  idealism  found  a  new  ob- 
ject of  worship  in  the  F?therl'nd  and  in  the  religion  of 
Germanism.  The  new  doctrine  of  the  State  as  a  living 
machine,  an  organism  and  yet  not  so  much  an  organ- 
ism as  the  embodiment  of  German  national  strength,  of 
the  State  as  Power,  was  expressed  most  vividly  and 
clearly  by  Treitschke.  But  impatient  as  is  Treitschke 
with  the  purely  organic  theory  of  the  State  he  is  the 


84 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND    NATIONAL   LIFE 


legitimate  successor  of  Hegel  nevertheless.     Organism 
had  brought  forth  super-organism,  the  organic  state 
had  led  to  the  super-state,  the  actualization  of  the  power 
to  strike,  to  expand,  to  hold  together  and  to  defend 
whose  lack  is  the  one  unpardonable  sin  and  whose  ex- 
ercise and  triumph  is  the  one  supreme  political  virtue. 
From  the  point  of  view  of  reconstruction  then  we  see 
the  Germans  venturing  during  the  last  century  to  apply 
their  idealism  to  politics,  bringing  to  bear  on  iheir  new 
religion  of  the  State  an  immense  national  enthusiasm 
and  a  hitherto  unsuspecte<'  capacity  both  for  collective 
action  and  for  practical  efficiency.     They  found  think- 
ers who  formulated  their  creed  for  them  and  leaders 
who  translated  it  into  dazzling  achievements.     The 
Power  which  was  the  State  turned  on  Germans  a  help- 
ful and  kindly  countenance,  guiding  each  individual  in 
the  way  he  should  go,  giving  a  happy  and  obedient  peo- 
ple a  government  by  experts  that  was  the  wonder  of 
the  world ;  while  to  threats  or  restraint  from  without 
the  same  godlike  State  turned  an  eye  of  doom,  pre- 
pared to  annihilate  all  who  should  keep  the  German 
nation  from  its  place  in  the  sun.     And  such  was  the 
aspect  of  things  in  19 14. 

But  in  November,  1918,  the  structure  reared  by  Bis- 
marck collapsed.  The  all-essential  Power  had  proved 
inadequate.  And  what  remains  to  be  seen  is  whether 
the  capacity  for  organization  discovered  during  the 


ID£AUSM    IN    GERMAN    POLITICS 


85 


last  century  will  find  itself  able  to  effect  a  new  ad- 
justment, to  express  itself  in  some  more  permanent 
form  than  the  Prussian  autocracy  and  bureaucracy  had 
supplied. 

The  growth  of  the  German  social  democracy  has 
thus  a  double  significance.  It  is  the  resurgence  of  the 
old  Protestant  individualism,  and  it  represents  a  theory 
of  organization  radically  differing  from  that  of  Prus- 
sia. Whether  it  will  result  in  dissensions  and  futilities 
or  in  a  successful  socialist  state  remains  to  be  seen. 
Momentary  discord  is  inevitable,  just  as  momentary 
national  humiliation  is  inevitable.  The  German  peo- 
ple must  pay  the  price  of  a  difficult  experiment  just  as 
they  must  pay  the  price  of  crimes  to  which  —  no  mat- 
ter who  was  immediately  responsible  —  they  gave  their 
consent  and  cooperation.  The  real  test  will  come 
not  next  month  or  n'^  rt  year  but  during  the  next  gen- 
eration and  perhap   ''•        '  ;  century. 

What  then  is  the  j,  .  a  id  the  vital  force  of  German 
socialism?  Strangeiy  enough  it  too  sprang  from 
Hegel.  It  too  is  an  attempt  to  realize  the  organic  state, 
and  its  fundamental  protest  against  the  Empire  as 
against  all  modern  states  lies  in  the  contention  that  they 
are  not  organic  and  cannot  be,  that  they  are  mechanical 
and  rest  on  a  false  principle.  The  normal  existing 
state  rests  on  a  contradiction  —  the  separation  by  law 
and  custom  of  the  workers  from  the  instruments  of 


86 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL  LIFE 


their  work,  land  and  capital.  Ultimately  all  society 
rests  on  human  labor.  But  labor  is  helpless  without 
land  and  capital.  And  the  system  that  keeps  separate 
elements  of  production  that  are  by  nature  and  necessity 
bound  together  brings  about  class  domination,  the  ex- 
istence and  even  often  the  despotic  rule  of  idlers  and 
parasites,  the  entire  distortion  of  the  body  politic.  The 
capitalist  is  able  to  exploit  the  laborer ;  the  land-owner 
is  able  to  monopolize  or  use  to  selfish  advantage  fer- 
tile fields,  indispensable  highways,  mines,  strategic  in- 
dustrial sites ;  and  these  two  working  together  create  a 
condition  worse  than  feudalism.  There  is  only  one 
remedy:  the  reorganization  of  the  State,  now  dis- 
eased and  deformed,  so  that  labor  will  be  unhampered 
and  production  be  liberated  from  its  present  handicaps. 
When  this  is  done  the  State  will  indeed  be  a  true  organ- 
ism, healthy  and  able  to  progress  toward  the  full  real- 
ization of  human  possibilities. 

German  socialism  found  its  great  prophet  in  Karl 
Marx,  its  first  apostle  and  leader  in  Ferdinand  Lassalle. 
We  need  not  here  distinguish  between  these  as  found- 
ers of  modern  socialism.  Arriving  independently  at 
similar  conclusions  they  differed  in  method,  and  for  a 
time  their  followers  failed  to  see  their  common 
ground.  Marx  used  as  his  medium  first  the  Com- 
munist League  of  the  forties,  then  later  on  the 
International     Workingmen's     Association     founded 


IDEALISM   IN    GERMAN    POLITICS 


87 


in    1864;    Lassalle    worked    through    his    Universal 
German     Workingmen's     Association     founded     in 
1863.     But  the   aims  of  all   these   were  essentially 
the    same.     In    the    words    of    Marx    their    pur- 
pose   was    that    "of    promoting    among   the    work- 
ing-classes  and    other   classes   a   self-conscious  par- 
ticipation  in   the   process   of   historical   transforma- 
tion  of   society  that  was  taking  place  under  their 
eyes."     Their  challenge  to  the  world  was  uttered  in 
the  Communist  Manifesto  of  1848,  uttered  in  words 
that  are  as  living  to-day  as  when  they  were  written: 
"  The  Communists  *  do  not  seek  to  conceal  their  views 
and  aims.     They  declare  openly  that  their  purpose  can 
only  be  obtained  by  a  violent  overthrow  of  all  existing 
arrangements  of  society.     Let  the  ruling  classes  trem- 
ble at  a  communistic  revolution.     The  proletariat  have 
nothing  to  lose  in  it  but  their  chains ;  they  have  a  world 
to  win.     Proletarians  of  the  world,  unite!  "     And  the 
statutes  of  the  International  adopted  at  Geneva  in  1866 
declared  that  "  the  economic  subjection  of  the  laborer 
to  the  possessor  of  the  means  of  labor,  i.  e.,  of  the 
sources  of  life,  is  the  first  cause  of  his  political,  moral 
and  material  servitude,  and  that  the  economic  emanci- 
pation of  labor  is  consequently  the  great  aim  to  which 
every  political  movement  ought  to  be  subordinated." 

1  Communism   in    1848  meant   what   Socialism   means  to-day 
Both   words  have  changed   their   significance  in   the  last   lifi 
years,  but  the  confusion  is  only  verbal. 


88 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


In  1875  the  followers  of  Lassalle  and  of  Marx,  rec- 
ognizing that  their  aims  and  principles  were  identi- 
cal, joined  forces  at  Gotha  in  what  was  thereafter  the 
German  Social  Democracy.  The  International  flick- 
ered out  and  died.  The  Social  Democratic  Party 
waxed  in  strength  and  solidarity  until  it  became 
the  standard  of  orthodox  socialism,  its  platform 
based  on  the  great  work  of  Marx,  Capital, 
the  Bible  of  the  movement.  To  the  socialist 
Marx  in  this  book  destroyed  the  entire  theoretical 
basis  of  capitalism,  but  it  was  far  more  than 
a  monument  of  destructive  criticism.  It  pointed  the 
way  to  the  socialist  state  as  not  only  the  only  remedy 
but  the  inevitable  goal  toward  which  the  world  was 

moving. 

But  the  actual  form  to  be  assumed  by  the  socialist 
state  remained  problematic.  Marx  himself  and  many 
of  his  followers  have  been  content  to  point  out  the  in- 
herent defects  of  the  existing  system,  the  rational  basis 
of  the  socialist  remedy,  and  the  certainty  of  socialism's 
ultimate  triumph.  But  the  explicit  practical  program 
of  government  was  to  be  determined  by  circumstances 
and  by  the  march  of  facts.  "  Who  could  say,"  said 
Wilhelm  Liebknecht  thirty  years  ago,  "  Who  could  say 
what  the  socialist  statr  of  the  future  is  to  be  ?  Who 
could  foresee  so  much  as  the  development  of  the  ex- 
isting German  state  for  a  single  year?  "    Like  every 


IDEAUSM    IN   GERMAN    POLITICS 


89 


Other  living  thing  the  socialist  state  would  grow  and 
change  as  altered  conditions  brought  the  need  for  new 
adjustments. 

For  the  triumph  of  socialism  was  not  regarded  only 
as  the  triumph  of  right  over  wrong.  It  was  the  in- 
evitable result  of  social  evolution.  As  absolutism  had 
been  replaced  by  feudalism,  as  feudalism  had  been  re- 
placed by  the  rule  of  the  bourgeois  —  each  change  a 
beneficent  one  and  even  the  power  of  capitalism  being 
regarded  as  a  legitimate  and  necessary  ^  aase  of  social 
development  —  so  the  bourgeois  state  is  to  be  replaced 
by  the  proletarian.  With  the  victory  of  the  workers 
the  class  war  of  the  ages  will  end.  As  each  class  has 
won  power  it  has  exploited  those  beneath  it.  But  there 
is  no  class  to  be  exploited  by  the  workers.  Their  su- 
premacy will  represent  the  final  victory  of  democracy. 

Here,  then,  is  where  the  readers  of  the  newspapers 
may  take  up  the  story.  For  socialism,  after  years  of 
conflict  with  Prussianism,  after  a  steady  advance  in 
numbers  and  power  for  sixty  years,  is  conf ronte  '  vith 
the  practical  problem  of  government.  No  critic  ol  ihe 
Social  Democracy  need  feel  undue  satisfaction  in  the 
conflicts  between  Liebknecht  and  Ebert,  between 
"  Reds "  and  moderates.  Socialism  is  not  proved 
wrong  or  unpractical  because  socialists  have  different 
views  as  to  details  of  procedure.  The  real  test  will 
come  when  the  preliminary  disputes  are  over  and  when 


90  RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL    LIFE 

a  definite  effort  is  made  under  fairly  normal  condi- 
tions to  create  a  socialist  state  in  Germany.  And  we 
can  at  least  make  this  comment :  that  the  intense  de- 
votion of  the  Germans  to  an  idea  added  to  the  German 
capacity  for  discipline  and  organization  may  lead  us  to 
expect  that  if  socialism  can  succeed  anywhere  it  can 
succeed  in  Germany. 

To  prophesy  in  these  days  of  rapid  change  is  futile. 
The  Germans  had  proved  their  genius  in  many  fields 
long  before  1871.     Of  their  ability  to  form  a  poHtical 
imion  that  would  be  an  adequate  expression  of  their 
national  life  the  German  Empire  of  1871-1918  was 
the  first  test.     It  has  proved  a  failure;  but  the  mar- 
velous achievements  of  the  last  fifty  years  indicate  that 
while  there  was  a  fatal  flaw  in  the  machinery  yet  there 
was  so  much  success  that  another  experiment  may  well 
be  tried  without  discouragement.     .And  this  time  the 
German  love  for  a  doctrine  evolved  by  thought  is  better 
satisfied  than  under  the  Empire.     The  German  is  ter- 
ribly Utopian,  and  he  is  at  the  same  time  terribly  prac- 
tical.    From  his  inability  to  see  life  as  a  whole,  from 
his  way  of  seeing  only  a  part  but  seeing  that  part  with 
an  intense  clearness  and  conviction  have  come  his  suc- 
cesses and  his  failures.     It  is  now  his  task  to  take  an- 
otlier  dream,  another  idea,  and  to  reconstruct  by  its 
light  his  shaken  and  disillusioned  country.     But  if  the 
reconstruction  will  follow  a  new  plan  its  basis  in  the 


IDEALISM    IN   GERMAN    POLITICS 


91 


German  character  and  in  German  history  is  very  much 
what  it  was  in  187 1.  And  if  we  do  not  dare  to  predict 
the  outcome  it  is  because  our  faith  in  the  solidity  and 
virtue  of  that  foundation  has  been  so  sorely  shaken. 


yi 


The  Russians  and  the  Dawn  of  Russian 
Freedom 

When  an  American,  a  Frenchman  or  an  English- 
man turns  to  the  study  of  Russia  he  does  well  to  recog- 
nize at  the  outset  that  he  is  entering  an  alien  world. 
The  peoples  of  western  Europe,  with  all  their  differ- 
ences in  language,  customs,  and  attitude  to  life,  are  yet 
members  of  a  common  family;  their  lines  of  political 
and  spiritual  development  have  been  intertwined  for 
fifteen  centuries ;  to  tell  the  story  of  any  one  of  them 
without  mentioning  the  ethers  would  be  an  absurdity 
that   no   one   has   ever   ventured.     For   all    western 
peoples  look  back  to  Rome.     All  were  for  ages  com- 
mon  children   of   the   Catholic   Church.     All   passed 
through  the  age  of  feudalism.     All  felt  the  impact  of 
Mohammedanism  and  flamed  with  ardor  in  the  Cru- 
sades.    All  awoke  to  new  intellectual  life  with  the 
Renaissance,  and  all  were  stirred  by  the  religious  rev- 
olution of  the  sixteenth  century. 

But  in  all  of  these  things  Russia  had  no  part.     She 

92 


DAWN    OF   RUSSIAN    FREEDOM 


93 


never  formed  part  of  the  Roman  Empire.     The  juris- 
diction of  the  Pope  never  touched  Kiev  or  Moscow 
The  spiritual  currents  and  storms  of  western  Europe 
beat  in  vain  against  the  invisible  wall  that  stretched 
from  the  Baltic  to  the  Bosphorus.     And  until  two 
hundred  years  ago  Russia  was  almost  as  completely  out 
of  touch  with  Europe  as  the  planet  Mars.     The  two 
worlds    did  indeed  touch  for  a  time  at  one  point.     In 
the  tenth  century  of  our  era  the  Russians  learned  their 
first  lessons  in  Christianity  and  civilization  under  the 
teachings  of  Greek  missionaries  from  Constantinople. 
But  before  their  education  was  well  begun  it  was  inter- 
rupted.    At  the  time  when  representatives  of  the  Eng- 
lish towns  were  meeting  in  the  first  House  of  Commons 
Russia  was  falling  before  the  all-conquering  Tartars. 
While  the  western  peoples  were  slowly  escaping  from 
feudalism  and  feeling  the  first  mighty  thrills  of  the 
Renaissance,  while  Dante  was  writing  the  Divine  Com- 
edy, while  Giotto  was  reviving  the  art  of  painting, 
while    Petrarch   and    Era    Angelico,    Boccaccio   and 
Chaucer  were  each  in  his  own  way  leading  men  to  new 
visions  of  joy  and  truth,  Russia  was  still  prostrate  be- 
neath the  rule  of  Asiatic  barbarians.     And  even  when 
a  Grand  Prince  of  Moscow  led  the  way  in  shaking  off 
the  Tartar  yoke  ( 1480)  it  was  only  to  consolidate  Rus- 
sia into  an  autocracy  of  the  Asiatic  type.     Under  the 
Czars  as  under  the  Khans  the  people  bent  submissively 


94  RECONSTRUCTION   AND  NATIONAL   LIFE 

under  the  rod,  obetlient  and  inert.  So  that  in  the  sev- 
enteenth century,  when  the  men  of  the  west  were  far- 
ing forth  on  adventures  overseas,  laying  the  basis  of 
modern  physics  and  astronomy,  and  facing  the  prob- 
lems of  civil  and  religious  liberty,  the  Russian  people 
had  yet  to  learn  their  first  lessons  in  civilization  as  we 
of  the  west  understand  it.  Under  Grand  Princes, 
Tartar  Khans  or  Czars,  they  lived  in  semi-civilized  iso- 
lation, content  to  toil  or  fight  at  the  bidding  of  their 
masters,  knowing  nothing  of  the  vigorous  life  of  the 
outer  world. 

The  beginning  of  a  new  era  came  with  Peter  the 
Great  (1689-1725).  He  found  a  people  essentially 
Asiatic,  their  faces  turned  eastward.  He  '  idertook 
to  reverse  the  current  of  five  centuries,  to  make  Russia 
European :  and  to  ensure  that  his  work  should  not  per- 
ish with  him  he  "  broke  a  window  "  through  the  wall 
that  separated  his  country  from  the  peoples  of  the  west. 
By  the  founding  of  St.  Petersburg  (Petrograd)  he 
gave  Russia  her  first  port  on  a  western  sea.  There- 
after ships,  travelers  and  merchants  came  to  the  Neva 
and  the  ideas  of  the  west  filtered  slowly  in  —  slowly, 
for  the  window  was  a  small  one,  and  the  people  who 
had  so  long  sat  in  darkness  gave  the  incoming  light  no 
cordial  welcome.  But  if  the  Russians  found  it  hard 
to  awaken  from  their  Slavic  inertia  their  princes  saw 
vistas  open  for  them  in  the  west  far  more  splendid  than 


DAWN   OF   RUSSIAN    FREEDOM 


95 


a  barren  dominion  over  the  steppes  could  offer,  and 
bit  by  bit  ambitious  Czars  made  Russia  a  European 
power.  Gradually  and  inevitably  the  Russians  learned 
new  and  intoxicating  lessons  from  western  books. 
French,  English  and  German  literature  and  thought 
came  to  disturb  age-hardened  conservatism,  to  awaken 
new  and  startling  ideas,  to  stimulate  a  desire  for  po- 
litical, social  and  intellectual  liberty.  The  new  light 
came  only  to  the  few  indeed:  the  millions  who  culti- 
vated and  traded  over  the  vast  plains  between  the 
White  Sea  and  the  Caspian,  between  the  Gulf  of  Fin- 
land and  the  Ural  Hills  or  in  far  Siberia,  cared  little 
for  changes  that  touched  only  the  leisure  classes  of 
Petersburg  or  Moscow.  But  by  the  opening  of  the 
nineteenth  century  the  great  current  of  Russian  life 
was  slowly  shifting  westward,  and  the  work  of  Peter 
was  bearing  fruit. 

The  nineteenth  century  v/ent  on.  The  French  Rev- 
olution had  brought  its  shattering  and  vitalizing  mes- 
sage, and  Russia  had  come  within  the  storm-area  ot 
the  Napoleonic  wars.  Western  Europe  was  full  of 
dreams  of  a  new  social  order.  Thrones  were  trem- 
bling and  the  nations  were  feeling  their  way  toward 
free  and  conscious  life.  Even  autocratic  princes 
bowed  to  the  genius  of  the  new  era,  trying  half  blindly, 
sometimes  willingly,  and  sometimes  unwillingly,  to 
avert  disaster  by  conciliation  and  adjustment.     Hesi 


96 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


tatingly  following  the  lead  of  the  western  rulers  the 
Czar  Alexander  II  liberated  the  serfs  of  Russia  by  a 
decree  of  1861.  Forty  millions  of  peasants  were 
freed  from  bondage  to  the  land,  cast  adrift  on  the  un- 
charted sea  of  personal  liberty. 

Then  came  to  Russia  the  Industrial  Revolution,  with 
its  machinery,  its  railroads,  its  factories  and 
its  rapid  growth  of  great  towns.  Peasants  by  tens  of 
thousands  passed  from  the  quiet,  unchanging  life  of 
the  villages  to  the  swirl  and  stimulus  of  the  cities. 
The  workers  learned  to  talk  and  read;  their  minds 
were  gradually  stirred  to  interest  in  liberty;  and  they 
heard  with  eager  curiosity  tales  of  their  brethren  in 
other  lands.  The  mental  and  social  awakening  that 
had  been  hitherto  confined  to  nobles  and  students 
spread  to  the  artisans.  Army  officers,  landholders, 
and  wage-earners  found  themselves  comrades  in  a  com- 
mon cause,  sharers  in  a  common  aspiration.  And  the 
new  life  in  conflict  with  the  machinery  of  autocratic 
government  brought  to  birth  the  strange  and  mighty 
force  of  nihilism. 

If  we  were  to  seek  the  spirit  of  Russia,  the  dreams, 
the  hoj-es,  the  motive  forces  of  the  people  during  the 
latter  half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  where  should  we 
look?  The  histories  speak  of  "  Russia  "  fighting  Eng- 
land and  France  during  the  Crimean  War,  fighting  the 
Turks  in  1877-8,  being  humiliated  at  the  Congress 


DAWN   OF   RUSSIAN    FREEDOM 


97 


of  Berlin,  entering  into  alliance  with  France.  But 
v/as  tb's  really  Russia,  or  was  it  a  small  group  of  offi- 
cials acting  in  the  name  of  the  Czar?  Or  were  the 
Revolutionists  the  real  Russia?  Or  are  we  to  find 
the  soul  of  Russia  in  the  vast  mass  of  the  Russian  peo- 
ple in  town  <  id  country?  Perhaps  in  all  three.  For 
it  has  happened  that  even  a  monarch  or  an  aristocracy 
clothed  with  absolute  power  may  in  a  measure  ex- 
press the  inarticulate  soul  of  a  people.  It  is  surely 
not  inaccurate  to  say  that  in  a  very  true  sense  "  Rus- 
sia "  strove  against  Swedes  and  Turks  to  reach  the 
sea  highways  and  looked  wistfully  toward  Constan- 
tinople both  as  a  southern  gateway  and  as  a  holy  city 
to  be  redeemed  from  the  infidels. 

But  it  is  nevertheless  true  that  we  should  be  far  from 
an  understanding  of  the  real  Russia  if  we  judged  her 
only  by  the  doings  of  autocrats,  diplomats  and  gen- 
erals. At  all  events  we  shall  leave  the  Czars  to  the 
political  historians,  or  regard  them  only  as  their  gov- 
ernment reacted  on  Russia  herself.  With  conquests 
and  diplomacy  we  have  here  no  concern.  We  shall  re- 
member the  Emperor  and  his  vast  governing  machin- 
ery only  as  an  overwhelming  repressive  force,  allied 
with  the  Church  in  a  never-ceasing  effort  to  keep  things 
as  they  were,  to  keep  the  people  devout  and  obedient,  to 
discourage  the  dangerous  habit  of  question  and  criti- 
cism.    Our  >:iifort  will  be  to  pierce  this  rigid  shell  that 


98 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


sought  to  keep  the  Russian  soul  from  a  too  restless 
wakefulness  and  to  study  that  soul  itself.  For  in  the 
last  twenty  years  the  awakening  has  come ;  the  shell  has 
been  broken ;  and  we  need  now  to  understand  not  the 
policy  of  Czars  but  the  aspirations  and  character  of 
the  people. 

There  is  one  essential  contrast  between  the  spirit  of 
Russia  and  that  of  the  west  which  tends  to  make 
Russia  peculiarly  difificult  for  an  American  to  under- 
stand; and  yet  once  the  contrast  is  realized  it  helps 
much  to  throw  light  on  the  situation.  Take,  for  in- 
stance, the  Russian  novelists  —  for  a  people's  stories 
illuminate  their  character  as  does  no  other  single  form 
of  expression  —  and  compare  them  with  ours.  The 
tales  of  America  and  England  are  pre-eminently  tales 
of  action.  Their  heroes  are  men  who  do  things,  and 
even  their  tragedies  are  tragedies  of  struggle,  of  unre- 
alized ambition,  of  conflicts  of  will,  of  human  enter- 
prise thwarted  by  destiny.  Now  the  Russian  novelists 
do  not  —  with  one  exception  to  be  noted  later  — 
dwell  on  action  based  on  individual  initiative,  on  am- 
bition issuing  in  decision,  on  the  stubborn  hardening 
of  moral  muscles  braced  to  achievement,  but  on  suf- 
fering, endurance,  sorrow,  submissiveness  —  rage  and 
rebellion  too,  often,  but  rebellion  frenzied,  futile  and 
passionate,  as  unavailing  as  a  cr}'  of  pain  or  an  oath.* 

in  Dostoyevsky's  best  known  novel,  Crime  and  Punish- 


vtent. 


DAWN   OF   RUSSIAN    FREEDOM 


99 


Their  people  are  the  playthings  of  forces  too  great 
for  them;  they  have  dreams,  aspirations,  but  that  is 
all;  and  they  drift  to  storm  or  safety,  to  tragedy  or 
happiness  with  little  will  of  their  own. 

Take  for  instance,  one  of  the  best  known  characters 
in  Russian  literature,  the  Rudin  of  Turgenev.  Gifted 
with  surpassing  power  of  clear  thought,  with  eloquence, 
with  real  intellectual  gicatness  and  personal  charm,  he 
remains  a  failure.  "  Nature  has  given  me  much,"  he 
says  in  a  letter  of  bitter  confession,  "  but  I  shall  die 
without  doing  anything  worthy  of  my  powers,  without 
leaving  any  trace  behind  me.  All  my  wealth  is  dis- 
sipated idly:  I  do  not  see  the  fruits  of  the  seeds  I 
sow.  I  am  wanting  in  something  ...  A  strange,  al- 
most farcical  fate  is  mine;  I  would  devote  myself  ea- 
gerly and  wholly  to  some  cause,  and  I  cannot  devote 
myself.  I  shall  end  by  sacrificing  myself  to  some 
folly  or  other  in  which  I  shall  not  even  believe."  The 
trouble  with  Rudin  could  be  stated  in  two  ways:  he 
lacked  the  will  to  make  decisions,  to  express  his  ideas 
and  his  ideals  in  constructive  action,  so  that  he  drifted 
with  the  tide  of  circumstance,  a  wasted  genius;  and 
he  loved  perfection  with  the  ecstatic  love  of  a  mystic 
—  he  could  neither  compromise  nor  bring  his  mind  to 
bear  on  the  patient,  toilsome  work  needed  for  the  at- 
tainment of  his  high  goal  —  as  if  Christian,  in  the 
great  English  allegory,  had  let  himself  be  so  rapt  in 


lOU  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

his  vision  of  the  Celestial  City  that  he  stumbled  and 
perished  on  the  perilous  road  by  which  he  had  to 
travel.  It  is  true  that  Rudin  himself  is  a  type  of  only 
a  small  group,  the  "  intellectuals  "  of  the  forties  who 
felt  the  inspiration  of  western  thought  but  lacked  any 
outlet  for  their  enthusiasm  and  failed,  not  entirely  by 
their  own  fault,  to  give  their  country  any  positive  help 
toward  a  higher  life.  But  his  incapacity  for  construc- 
tive action  is  nevertheless  truly  Russian.  The  Polish 
novelist  Henry  Sinkiewicz  has  called  it  I'improduc- 
tk'itc  slave,  the  Slavic  fruitlessness.  And  Rudin's 
combination  of  inertia  —  not  mental  inertia  but  inertia 
of  the  will  — with  high  ideals  made  him  a  genuine 
type.  "  Every  Russian  "  says  Stepniak,  "  has  in  him 
a  bit  of  Dmitri  Rudin." 

Oblomov,  in  Goncharov's  novel  of  that  name,  is 
quite  unlike  Rudin,  but  he  too  is  a  type  of  a  man  vir- 
tuous, gifted,  yet  with  no  power  of  initiative,  of  n- 
tinuous  action  directed  to  a  definitely  willed  end.  The 
typical  Russian  tragedy  is  the  tragedy  of  futility.  Yet 
one  need  not  suppose  that  this  paralysis  of  the  will 
is  inherent  in  the  Slavic  character.  It  may  rather  be 
interpreted  as  a  submissiveness  engendered  by  ages  of 
.  -gid  rule  and  unbroken  isolation.  It  was  apparently 
t'u  will  of  God  that  they  should  obey  others,  and  to 
vir^  e  of  obedience  they  adjusted  themselves. 
The  thoughtful  ones  among  them  might  react  on  the 


DAWN   OF   RUSSIAN    FREEDOM 


lOI 


situation  with  sadness  or  even  with  rebellion,  but  what 
was  to  be  done?  And  the  millions  who  knew  nothing 
of  any  other  mode  of  life  were  not  even  mutinous. 

The  literature  of  Russia  is  indeed  a  literature  of 
almost  unrelieved  gloom  —  its  sorrowful  soul  forever 
looking  through  bars  or  beating  at  them  in  vain  rage. 
Of  all  the  great  Slavic  writers  Gogol  alone  —  a  child 
of  the  Ukraine,  of  Little  Russia,  a  Cossack  of  the 
south,  born  and  bred  among  a  people  of  lighter  heart 
than  their  brethren  of  the  north  —  reflects  anything 
of  the  gayety  and  joy  of  living  that  is  a  commonplace 
in  western  literature.  Turgenev,  Tolstoy,  Dostoyev- 
sky  and  their  successors  down  to  our  own  day  paint 
a  world  full  of  failure,  tngedy  and  intolerable  sad- 
ness. But  on  the  other  hand  the  Russian  people  them- 
selves are  not  gloomy  at  all.  They  have  been  accus- 
tomed for  centuries  to  condftions  that  a  westerner 
would  find  unendurable,  and  they  have  learned  to  make 
the  best  of  things.  It  is  the  will  of  God;  why  should 
we  make  matters  worse  by  complaining?  It  is  true 
that  this  submissiveness  and  cheerful  endurance  had 
its  evil  side  in  a  certain  animal  brutality,  in  drunken- 
ness, in  sensuality,  and  might  break  now  and  then  in 
fits  of  ferocity  and  passion.  But  on  the  whole  we  may 
view  the  Russians  as  inert,  uncomplaining,  submissive, 
and  yet  gay  and  cheerful  under  the  yoke,  just  as  the 
negroes  of  the  south  sang  and  danced  in  the  days  of 


\> 


J    ' 


\r\ 


102  RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

slavery.  It  seems  strange,  perhaps,  to  a  free  people, 
but  there  is  nothing  paradoxical  or  unusual  in  the 
gayety  of  slaves. 

But  what  would  be  paradoxical  and  unusual  would 
be  a  light  heart  among  slaves  idio  hare  begun  to  dream 
of  freedom.     The  incoming  of  ideas  from  the  west 
might  not  touch  the   millions.     But  to  the   few  it 
meant  a  blinding  vision  of  a  world  of  liberty  and 
progress  from  which  they  were  barred,  not  by  nature, 
but  by  a  rigid,  repressive  and  corrupt  system  of  gov- 
ernment.    Thoughtful  minds  learned  to  feel  the  trag- 
edy of  membership  in  a  race  whose  very  soul  had  be- 
come paralyzed  and  whose  government,  however  cor- 
rupt and  inefficient  in  its  other  activities,  kept  a  watch- 
ful eye  on  the  chains  that  kept  the  people  enslaved. 
The  gloom  that  we  associate  with  Russian  literature 
is  the  gloom  of  this  awakened  few,  and  the  more  pas- 
sionate of  these  found  relief  —  according  to  their  tem- 
perament —  in  religious  skepticism,  in  science,  in  en- 
thusiastic study  of  western  literature,  in  German  phi- 
losophy, or  in  nihilism.     And  the  appearance  of  nihil- 
ism is  the  one  exception  to  which  we  referred  above, 
the  one  element  in  Russian  literature  that  shows  the 
birth  of  a  Russian  will  to  act.     The  action  might  be 
blind,  foolish,  and  for  a  time  fruitless,  but  it  was  the 
beginning  of   the   breaking  of   the   shell.     We  have 
spoken  of  the  submissiveness,  the  spiritual  inertia  of 


I    « 


DAWN    OF    RUSSIAN    FREEDOM 


103 


the  Russians  as  being  their  most  visible  characteristic, 
inducing  a  vast  patience,  an  uncomplaining  obedience, 
a  broad  tolerance  and  adaptiveness  too,  a  plasticity 
that  was  the  corollary  of  their  utter  lack  of  initiative. 
But  after  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  rentury  we  see 
a  new  spirit  rising  —  a  tiny  spark  at  first,  but  flickering 
into  a  flame  and  finally  bursting  forth  in  our  own  time 
in  the  immense  conflagration  that  we  call  the  Revolu- 
tion. 

The  word  "  nihilist "  appears  first  in  a  novel  of 
Turgenev,  Fathers  and  Children  (1862).  A  father 
and  uncle,  men  of  the  old  school,  Nicolai  and  Pavel 
Petrovitch,  are  in  conversation  with  a  boy  just  returned 
from  the  University.  The  young  man,  self-confident, 
his  head  full  of  the  new  ideas  he  had  picked  up  at  col- 
lege, proud  of  the  skepticism  which  he  had  learned  to 
apply  to  all  things,  had  brought  home  with  him  a 
friend,  BazarofT,  and  he  thus  describes  his  companion 
to  the  two  older  men : 

"  Would  you  like  to  have  me  tell  you,  my  dear  uncle, 
what  sort  of  parson  he  is?" 

"  Pray  do   my  dear  nephew." 

"  He  is  a  nihilist." 

"What?"  asked  Nikolai  Petrovitch;  and  Pavel 
Petrovitch  elevated  his  knife,  with  a  bit  of  butter 
sticking  to  the  blade,  in  the  air,  and  remained  motion- 
less. 


^ij 


I 


104  RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

"  He  is  a  nihilist."  repeated  Arcady. 
"A    nihilist,"    said     Xicolai    Petrovitch.     "That 
comes  from  the  Latin  niliil,  nothing,  so  far  as  I  can 
judge ;  consequently  that  word  designates  a  man  who 
.  .  .  who  recognizes  nothing." 

"  Say :  '  who  respects  nothing.'  "  put  in  Pavel  Petro- 
vitch. and  devoted  himself  once  more  to  his  butter. 

"  Who  treats  everything  from  a  critical  point  of 
view."  remarked  Arcady. 

"  And  isn  't  that  exactly  the  same  thing?  "  inquired 
Pavel  Petrovitch. 

"  No.  it  is  not  exactly  the  same  thing.     A  nihilist 
is  a  man  who  does  not  bow  before  any  authority  what- 
ever, who  does  not  accept  a  single  principle  on  faith, 
with  whatever  respect  that  principle  may  be  environed." 
But  while  this  conversation  was  going  on  Bazaroff 
himself  was  off  in  a  swamp  hunting  frogs  for  dissec- 
tion.    He  was  a  medical  student  and  was  interested  in 
biology.     That  is  to  say.  if  he  was  an  enemy  of  con- 
ventions, customs,  the  church  and  the  government  — 
a  nihilist  in  that  he  bowed  to  no  master  and  no  princi- 
ple —  he  was  yet  a  believer  in  experiment,  a  believer 
in  truth  that  he  could  see  and  demonstrate.     As  Pavel 
Petrovitch  remarked  a  little  later  Bazaroff  "  does  not 
believe  in  principles  but  he  does  believe  in  frogs." 

Here  then  is  the  basal  force  in  nihilism.     Preceded 
by  the  kind  of  agitation  for  greater  social  freedom 


DAWN   OF   RUSSIAN    FREEDOM 


105 


which  was  known  in  the  west  as  Liberalism,  agitation 
which  might  strive  for  freedom,  a  constitution,  or  even 
a  repubh'c,  but  which  was  ordinarily  far  from  aiming 
at  either  destruction  of  all  government  or  complete 
social  reconstruction,  nihilism  sprang  from  the  brutal 
repression  of  all  criticism,  all  agitation  even  of  the 
most  insignificant  kind  which  might  threaten  the  ex- 
isting regime.     One  of  the  earlier  reformers  was  ex- 
iled for  saying  in  a  private  letter  that  he  had  seen  a 
policeman  kill  a  man  in  St.  Petersburg.     No  manifes- 
tation of  political  discontent  was  too  small  to  bring 
suspicion    and    punishment.     And    the    new    force, 
checked  and  stifled  in  its  normal  growth,  spread  under- 
ground and  became  —  at  least  in  its  extreme  manifes- 
tations —  sinister,  deadly  and  bitter,  a   force  essen- 
tially negative  and  destructive  that  would  wipe  out  the 
whole  social  order  and  begin  life  again  on  a  fresh  page. 
Not  that  all  nihilists  would  have  gone  so  far.     But  the 
extreme   revolutionary  wing  gave  their  tone  to  the 
rest,  and  moderate  men  joined  with  anarchists  and 
socialists  because  they  saw  no  alternative  but  submis- 
sion.    Thousands  of  earnest  minds  saw  before  them 
a  definite  choice  between  nihilism  and  the  acceptance 
of  a  cruel  and  degrading  tyranny.     Some  yielded  to 
the  "  Slavic  inertia "  and  turned  their  energies  into 
lines  permitted  by  the  government.     But  many  refused, 
and  joined  the  ranks  of  "  underground  Russia."     Dur- 


^'  IH 


i 


I06  RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

ing  the  decades  of  the  sixties  and  the  seventies  mihtant 
nihilism  grew  and  waxed  fiercer,  while  liberalism  faded 
and  lost  its  influence.  Even  so  radical  a  liberal  and  re- 
former as  Mazzini  would  have  seemed  a  moderate,  a 
"  reactionary,"  a  defender  of  tyrants,  among  the  ter- 
rorists of  1878. 

Yet  liberalism,  overshadowed  as  it  was  for  a  time  by 
the  impetuous  ferocity  of  terrorism,  did  not  and  could 
not  wholly  disappear.*     The  great  army  united  for  the 
liberation  of  Russia  must  be  thought  of  as  consisting 
of  two  sections,—  three,  if  we  distinguish  the  terrorists 
as  a  separate  group  —  allied  for  the  common  purpose 
but  likely  enough  to  develop  mutual  hostility  once  that 
common  purpose  was  achieved.     Or  if  the  word  "  sec- 
tions "  seems  to  imply  too  sharp  a  line  of  cleavage  we 
may  dismiss  it  and  think  of  three  modes  of  progress, 
one  cautious  and  temperate,  one  impatient  and  passion- 
ate, a  third  reckless  to  the  point  of  fury,  three  modes 
that  shade  into  one  another  imperceptibly  by  infinite 
gradations.     Moreover  a  liberal  of  to-day  might  be 
associated  with  nihilists  to-morrow,  and  might  even  be 
a  terrorist  the  day  after.     All  desired  freedom,  and  to 
the  Czar  all  were  revolutionaries,  equally  guilty,  but 
they  varied  greatly  both  in  creed  and  in  enthusiasm. 
Let  us  take  a  concrete  example.     Two  of  the  most 

iThis  is  further  discussed  in  Chapter  IX  in  its  application  to 
recent  years. 


DAWN    OF    RUSSIAN    FREEDOM 


107 


notable  of  the  earlier  reformers  were  Alexander  Her- 
zen  and  Michael  Bakunin.  For  twelve  years  the  for- 
mer was  an  exile  in  France  and  England,  while  his 
friend  spent  two  years  in  an  Austrian  prison,  six  in  the 
dungeons  of  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul  at  St.  Petersburg, 
and  four  in  Siberia.  Both  had  begun  as  radicals  and 
socialists,  but  one  passed  gradually  to  the  ranks  of  lib- 
eralism while  the  other  became  an  anarchist  of  the 
extreme  type.  A  comparison  of  utterances  by  the  two 
men  late  in  the  sixties  shows  clearly  the  direction  of 
the  two  currents  that  in  spite  of  all  efforts  to  dam  them 
both  were  sweeping  Russia  toward  Revolution,  two 
currents  —  to  continue  the  metaphor  somewhat  reck- 
lessly —  that  might  well  meet  and  create  a  whirlpool 
once  the  revolution  was  accomplished. 

This  first  from  a  letter  written  by  Herzen  to  Ba- 
kunin : 

"  I  will  own  that  one  day,  surrounded  by  dead  bodies, 
by  houses  destroyed  by  balls  and  bullets,  and  listening 
feverishly  as  prisoners  were  being  shot  down,  I  called 
with  my  whole  heart  and  intelligence  upon  the  savage 
force  of  vengeance  to  destroy  the  old  criminal  world, 
without  thinking  much  of  what  was  to  come  in  its 
place.  Since  that  time  twenty  years  have  gone  by; 
the  vengeance  has  come,  but  it  has  come  from  the 
other  side,  and  it  is  the  people  who  have  borne  it,  be- 
cause they  comprehended  nothing  either  then  or  since. 


h  ' 


I08         RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

A  long  and  painful  interval  has  given  time  for  pas- 
sions to  calm,  for  thoughts  to  deepen ;  it  has  given  the 
necessary  time  for  reflection  and  observation.     Neither 
you  nor  I  have  betrayed  our  convictions;  but  we  see 
the  question  now  from  a  different  point  of  view.     You 
rush  ahead,  as  you  did  before,  with  a  passion  of  de- 
struction, which  you  take  for  a  creative  passion;  you 
crush  every  obstacle;  you  respect  history  only  in  the 
future.     As  for  mc,  on  the  contrary,  I  have  no  faith 
in  the  old  revolutionary  methods,  and  I  try  to  compre- 
hend the  march  of  men  in  the  past  and  in  the  present, 
to  know  how  to  advance  with  them  without  falling 
behind,  but  without  going  on  so  far  before  as  you,  for 
they  would  not  follow  me  — they  could  not  follow 

me!" 

This,  on  the  other  hand,  is  from  the  Revolutionary 
Catechism  inspired  if  not  actually  written  by  Bakunin: 

"The  revolutionist  is  a  man  under  a  vow.  He 
ought  to  have  no  personal  interests,  no  business,  no 
sentiments,  no  property.  He  ought  to  occupy  himself 
entirely  with  one  exclusive  interest,  with  one  thought 
and  one  passion:  the  Revolution.  He  has  only  one 
aim,  one  science:  destruction.  For  that  and  nothing 
but  that  he  studied  mechanics,  physics,  chemistry  and 
medicine.  He  observes  with  the  same  object,  the  men, 
the  characters,  the  positions  and  all  the  conditions  of 
the  social  order.     He  despises  and  hates  existing  mo- 


DAWN   OF  RUSSIAN    FREEDOM 


109 


rality.  For  him  everything  is  moral  that  favors  the 
triumph  of  the  Revolution.  Everything  is  immoral 
and  criminal  that  hinders  it.  .  .  .  Between  him  and 
society  there  is  war  to  the  death,  incessant,  irrecon- 
cilable." 1 

These  two  men  are  both  types,  and  between  the  two 
extremes  of  cautious  liberalism  and  war  to  the  knife 
there  were  multitudes  whose  sympathies,  doubtless, 
were  with  the  revolution,  but  who  cannot  be  classified 
in  any  absolute  way.  Some  were  watchful  but  pas- 
sive. SoiVu  were  active  but  not  reckless.  Bakunin 
undoubtedly  had  a  large  following,  even  though  com- 
paratively few  lived  up  to  the  ideal  laid  down  in  the 
Revolutionary  Catechism.  In  the  extreme  cases  we 
must  admit  that  the  Slavic  apathy  was  broken  in  a 
frenzied  rush  to  the  opposite  extreme.  Submissive- 
ness  gave  place  to  fierce  rebellion;  inertia  to  a  wild 
desire  for  action  that  was  perhaps  akin  to  the  hysteria 
born  of  nerve-racking  torment.  This  tendency  was 
far  from  negligible;  it  issued  finally  in  the  terrorist 
movement  of  1878  and  succeeding  years  that  many 
western  minds  associate  exclusively  with  nihilism. 
But  just  as  it  is  absurd  to  associate  the  French  Revo- 
lution solely  with  massacres  and  the  decapitation  of 
aristocrats,  so  it  is  well,  as  we  have  already  indicated, 

1  Both  of  these  extracts  are  quoted  from  Rae.  Contemporary 
Socialism,  pp.  273-275  (New  York,  1891). 


1,1: 


I  ' 


no  RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

to  distinguish,  not  merely  between  liberalism,  and  radi- 
calism, but  between  nihilism  and  .errorism.  ihose 
who  think  of  nihilists  and  anarchists  as  men  and 
women  devoted  primarily  to  the  throwing  of  bombs 
and  the  murder  of  princes  would  do  well  to  consider 
the  life  and  activities  of  such  a  man  as  Prince  Kropot- 
kin.  A  scientist  of  international  reputation  and  a  man 
of  the  most  admirable  kindliness  and  sanity,  Kropotkin 
became  a  nihilist  and  an  anarchist.  And  we  venture  to 
believe  that  few  Americans  —  bearing  in  mind  the 
Russia  of  his  time  —  can  read  his  Memoirs  of  a  Revo- 
lutionist without  honoring  both  his  nihilism  and  his 

anarchism. 

For  whatever  we  may  think  of  the  terrorists  —  the 
militant  nihilists  who  responded  to  savage  persecution 
by  war  against  their  oppressors  —  the  revolutionaries 
of  the  Kropotkin  type  were  simply  men  and  women 
who  deliberately  set  themselves  to  the  destruction  of 
the  -'il  system  that  was  crushing  the  life  out  of  Russia 
by  counteracting  its  poison. '^  According  to  tempera- 
ment and  convictions  they  approved  or  disapproved 
of  the  terrorists,  but  they  quite  realized  that  the  kill- 
ing of  officials  would  not  alone  save  Russia,  and  they 
bent  their  efforts  to  the  moral  and  intellectual  educa- 
tion of  the  people.     The  tyranny  of  the  government 

1  See  The  Little  Grandmother  of  the  Russian  Revolution,  chap- 
ters 3-6- 


i  % 


DAWN    OF   RUSSIAN    FREEDOM 


III 


was  possible  only  because  of  two  things  —  the  terrible 
apathy  of  the  oppressed  millions  and  the  social  conven- 
tions that  crushed  independent  thinking  and  living,  the 
labyrinth  of  customs  that  made  life  one  unending 
slavery.     If  only  the  apathy  could  be  broken,  if  men 
and  women  could  be  stirred  to  think  and  act  for  them- 
selves in  absolute  sincerity,  then  the  chains  would  fall 
off  of  their  own  accord.     It  was  not  by  killing  the 
Czar  but  by  the  awakening  of  a  free  and  manly  Rus- 
sia that  redemption  could  come.     If  even  this  type  of 
nihilism  often  seemed  to  aim  at  destruction  it  was  only 
as  if  a  man  encased  in  a  shell  should  try  to  burst  his 
shell  simply  because  that  was  the  obvious  first  step. 
But  Kropotkin  quite  realized  that  even  the  bursting 
of  the  shell  would  be  vain  if  the  man  thus  freed  should 
lie  unchained  but  bewildered,  helpless,  passive,  or  if 
freedom  brought  a  mad  riot  of  passion  or  an  aimless 
running  to  and  fro.     So  the  work  of  awakening  the 
soul  of  Russia  must  be  not  only  destructive  but  edu- 
cative; peasants  and  workingmen  must  be  taught  to 
read  and  think  and  taught  to  organize  not  only  for  re- 
bellion but  for  cooperation  and  mutual  aid. 

Anarchism  was  to  many  a  natural  corollary  of  this. 
Government  as  the  Russian  knew  it  was  bad  through 
and  through.  That  one  man  — -  merely  because  he 
had  the  name  and  uniform  of  a  Czar,  a  chief  of 
police,  a  soldier  or  what  not  —  should  be  able  to  flog, 


%l\ 


112  RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

imprison,  exile  or  kill  another  man  seemed  unreason- 
able and  wholly  evil.     To  a  nihilist  this  was  one  of  the 
many  irrational  conventions  that  must  be  swept  away. 
So  he  stood  the  enemy  of  government  as  of  all  the 
other  "conventional  lies  of  civilized  mankind."     To 
Bakunin  this  meant  war.     To  Lavroff  and  Kropotkin 
war  was  necessary,  no  doubt,  but  a  war  not  v^holly  of 
bombs  and  bullets.     To  them  the  best  security  against 
murder,  meanness  and  dishonesty,  the  social  ills  that 
government  was  supposed  —  in  theory  —  to  combat, 
was  the  education  that  would  make  men  hate  these 
things,  cease  to  be  murderous,  mean  and  dishonest  in 
their  hearts.     Such  an  education  would  take  time, 
would  be  a  long  and  difficult  process,  but  so  much  the 
greater  reason  for  beginning  at  once.     And  in  the 
meantime  complete  freedom  would  be  infinitely  prefer- 
able, naturally,  to  the  rule  of  the  Czar.     For  if  people 
are  free  evils  tend  to  correct  themselves;  those  who 
are  foolish  or  wicked  are  checked  by  public  opinion; 
the  leaven  of  education  works  slowly,  but  it  does 
leaven  the  lump,  and  the  gradual  incoming  of  light  to 
darkened  minds  will  in  time  clear  away  the  evil  phan- 
toms and  foul  mists  born  of  ignorance  and  degrada- 
tion. 

Whatever  doubts  and  questions  may  arise  in  our 
minds  as  to  all  this  it  was  at  least  a  noble  and  fruit- 
ful doctrine.     That  it  often  brought  distortion  and 


4 


DAWN   OF   RUSSIAN    FREEDOM 


"3 


blunders  no  one  could  deny.^     But  in  the  meantime  it 
represented  the  first  gropings  of  Russia  toward  some- 
thing better  than  the  old  helpless  and  indolent  submis- 
sion, the  old  Slavic  apathy.     So  the  Russia  of  the 
nineteenth  century  was  a  Russia  breaking  its  shell, 
still  uncertain  and  divided  as  to  ultimate  aim,  but  in- 
tent on   freedom  and  some  kind  of  reconstruction. 
What  would  issue  forth  no  man  could  foresee.    But 
there  were  certainly  many  of  the  "breakers"  who 
tried  to  see  that  the  Russian  kindliness  and  patience 
should  survive  when  the  Russian  paralysis  of  will 
should  be  cured,  and  that  the  new  Russia  —  not  to  be 
created  by  the  gift  of  princes  or  even  by  the  legislation 
of  Parliaments,  but  by  the  growth  to  manhood  of  the 
whole  race  —  should  stand  on  the  broad  base  of  a  peo- 
ple free  in  soul,  devoted  to  "  liberty,  equality  and  fra- 
ternity "  as  a  matter  of  willing  choice.    And  if  the 
way  was  a  long  and  arduous  '.ne,  full  of  pitfalls  and 
guarded  by  formidable  giants  of  folly,  despair  and 
passion,  yet  the  martyrs  who  in  the  evil  days  of  the 
Czars  died  on  the  scaffold,  in  the  dungeons,  or  in  the 
Siberian  mines,  saw  the  Vision  afar  off,  and  were  con- 
tent to  be  the  vanguard  of  a  host  marching  to  certain 
victory. 

1  See  Dostoyevsky's  The  Possessed  for  a  portrayol  of  nihilism 
on  its  worst  side. 


I 


VII 


The  Russian  Problem  and  the  Revolution 


"  I  wouLL  like  in  these  last  moments,  before  the 
great  event  of  the  years,  that  we  should  look  to  the 
end  and  to  the  immediate  future,  and  in  these  last 
times  ask  ourselves,  can  we  really  do  something,  not 
in  order  to  reach  Constantinople,  not  in  order  to  alter 
the  map  of  Europe,  but  in  order  to  save  the  national 
inheritance,  an  heirloom  from  the  past  which  has 
fallen  into  our  hands." 

These  words  were  spoken  by  Alexander  Fedoro- 
vitch  Kerensky  on  the  floor  of  the  Imperial  Douma  of 
Russia  a  month  before  the  abdication  of  Nicholas  II. 
They  state  the  essential  problem  of  Russian  reconstruc- 
tion, a  problem  which  two  anxious  and  discouraging 
years  of  revolution  have  in  no  way  altered.  Different 
leaders,  different  parties  have  given  their  various  in- 
terpretations and  have  added  this  or  that  social  gospel. 
But  all  hope  that  from  the  chaos  will  emerge  a  new 
Russia,  her  national  .nheritance  preserved  and  liber- 
ated, the  obstacles  and  handicaps  to  her  progress  dis- 
carded.    It  is  our  task  to  make  the  efforts  toward  this 

114 


RUSSIAN    REVOLUTION 


"5 


end  intelligible,  to  face  the  conf-  '  i  and  turmoil  of 
the  revolution  and  seek  to  clarify  and  simplify  the 
course  of  events  by  isolating  the  essential  facts.  Much 
that  is  doubtful  and  bewildering  will  remain,  but  we 
may  at  least  peer  a  little  way  through  the  smoke  of 
battle  and  map  out  such  guiding  points  as  may  help 
toward  the  comprehension  of  strategy  and  issues.  For 
as  Kerensky  himself  pointed  out  in  another  speech 
revolution  is  only  destructive  as  a  means  to  an  end; 
it  is  constructive  in  its  ultimate  purpose,  and  only 
when  it  fails  does  it  result  in  disorder  and  retrogres- 
sion. Our  effort  must  be  to  see  the  essential  aims  in 
the  Russian  revolution,  the  struggles  to  form  a  solid 
basis  on  which  reconstruction  may  go  forward. 

We  have  already  seen  part  of  what  Kerensky  had 
in  mind  when  he  spoke  of  the  Russian  "  national  in- 
heritance." Let  us  see  now  the  present  phase  of  the 
revolution  in  the  light  of  past  phases,  placing  before 
our  minds  for  the  sake  of  clearness  the  outward  ex- 
pressions of  the  revolutionary  spirit  in  its  ebbing  and 
flowing  during  the  last  hundred  years.  The  most  ob- 
vious landmarks  may  be  indicated  by  their  dates  — 
1825,  1861,  1881,  1905,  and  1917,  and  in  1917  the 
three  months  of  March,  July  and  November. 

In  18^5  the  influence  of  the  French  revolution  and  of 
western  liberalism  moved  a  group  of  reformers  — 
known  in  later  discuss,  jn  as  Decembrists  —  to  take  ad- 


n 


Hi 


fi! 

M! 


•| 


•    >  k 


I  1 6  RECONSTRUCTION    AND    NATIONAL   LIFE 

vantage  of  the  death  of  Alexander  I  and  the  accession 
of  Nicholas  I  by  agitating  for  the  enthronement  of 
Nicholas'  more  liberal  brother  Constantine  and  the 
proclamation  of  a  constitution.     The  movement  was 
easily  suppressed  and  the  leaders  executed  or  sent  to 
Siberia.     There  followed  a  period  of  ferocious  repres- 
sion that  ended  only  with  the  death  of  Nicholas  in  1855. 
His  successor,  Alexander  II,  gave  promise  of  some- 
thing better,  and  for  a  time  this  promise  was  realized. 
The  law  courts  were  improved,  the  persecution  of 
liberalism  was  relaxed,  and  two  great  reforms  were 
carried  through,  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs  (1861) 
and  the  creation  of  local  elected  assemblies  —  Zemstvos 
for  the  country  districts  and  Doumas  for  the  towns. 
Both  reforms  were  imperfect :  the  liberated  serfs,  sad- 
dled with  a  heavy  debt  for  the  purchase  of  their  lands 
and  often  economically  if  not  legally  at  the  mercy  of 
their  former  proprietors,  found  themselves  frequently 
worse  off  than  before,  and  the  Zemstvos  and  Doumas 
were  soon  almost  overwhelmed  by  a  wave  of  reaction. 
But  notwithstanding  the  gradual  fading  of  the  Czar's 
liberalism  something  was  gained.     It  was  difficult  for 
the  peasants  to  escape  from  economic  dependence,  but 
from  their  old  legal  bondage  as  serfs  there  had  been 
no  escape  at  all  short  of  flight  and  outlawry.     The 
Zemstvos  and  Doumas  might  be  shorn  of  their  power 
and  the  electorate  might  be  limited,  but  they  provided 


RUSSIAN    REVOLUTION 


117 


at  least  some  medium  fr-r  the  expression  of  a  will 
other  than  that  of  the  p overnment. 

It  has  always  been   true  that  the  concession  of 
some  liberty  leads  to  a  vigorous  demand  for  more. 
The  real  revolutionary  agitation  in  modern   Russia 
began  in  the  sixties  and  became  steadily  more  power- 
ful in  each  decade  thereafter.     Nihilism  had  existed, 
no  doubt,  in  the  forties  and  the  fifties,  but  it  was 
largely  a  speculative  and  intellectual  movement,  inef- 
fective in  action  and  carrying  no  formidable  threat 
against  the  existing  system.     But  as  Alexander  II 
abandoned  his  movement  for  reform  and  relapsed  to 
the  repressive  policy  of  his  father,  the  disillusioned 
party  of  liberty  took  up  the  cau:^  with  renewed  activ- 
ity; their  anger  burned  away  what  was  left  of  their  in- 
dolence ;  and  without  throwing  aside  their  dreams  they 
turned  to  action.     Denied  the  legal  right  to  freedom 
of  speech,  even  to  petition  or  to  educate,  the  more  de- 
termined ones  declared  war,  and  took  to  the  only  weap- 
ons left  to  them,  the  revolver  and  the  bomb.     So 
elusive  and  powerful  did  the  invisible  army  of  "  un- 
derground  Russia"    become    that   the    Czar   almost 
yielded,  and  he  was  planning  to  give  Russia  a  consti- 
tution when  he  was  assassinated  in  1881. 

As  after  1825  and  1861,  the  forces  of  reaction  and 
persecution  became  fiercer  than  ever  after  the  murder 
of  Alexander  II.     During  the  reigns  of  Alexander  III 


ii8 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND    NATIONAL   LIFE 


(1881-1894)  and  of  Nicholas  II  (1894-1917)  the 
world  saw  Russia  divided  between  two  powers.  One 
was  the  visible  authority  of  the  Czar  and  his  officials, 
backed  by  police  and  army ;  the  other  was  the  invisible 
but  ever  present  and  ever  growing  host  of  the  Revo- 
lution. It  was  the  same  situation  that  one  might  have 
seen  sixty  years  before  in  the  Europe  of  Metternich 
and  Mazzini.  But  even  Metternich  did  not  dare  tc 
crush  and  trample  with  the  brutal  thoroughness  of  the 
Czars;  nor  did  Mazzini  and  his  companions  ever  re- 
spond to  persecution  with  the  ferocious  pertinacity  of 
the  terrorists.  Then  came  the  Russo-Japanese  war 
of  1904.  The  defeated  machine  of  Russian  govern- 
ment, discredited  and  dismayed,  broke  before  the  at- 
tack of  an  indignant  people,  and  the  revolution  won  a 
decisive  victory  with  the  granting  of  a  constitution  in 
1905.  But  it  was  not  final.  The  autocracy  was  hu- 
miliated and  defeated  but  not  beaten,  and  little  by  little 
it  seemed  to  be  winning  back  its  power.  The  end  came 
after  the  betrayals  and  the  disasters  of  19 15-16,  and 
the  abdication  of  the  Czar  in  March,  1917,  left  Russia 
a  republic.  But  a  republic  without  charts  or  rudder, 
and  the  anniversary  of  the  Czar's  abdication  saw  the 
country  broken,  disunited,  insulted  and  robbed  by  the 
triumphant  Germans.  Russia  had  passed  from  autoc- 
racy to  something  very  like  anarchy.' 

» It  is  worth  noting  that  each  of  Russia's  great  wars  since  1850 


RUSSIAN    REVOLUTION 


119 


So  much  for  the  historical  landmarks.  Now  let  us 
make  another  step  toward  clear  thinking  by  noting 
one  or  two  significant  facts  as  to  territ  v  aiid  popi'- 
lation.  In  the  first  place  we  must  bear  in  niirni  th?. 
nearly  all  of  the  current  statements  regar  ':t»g  the  Rus- 
sian people  refer  to  only  one  section  of  Russia,  the 
section  known  as  Great  Russia  —  roughly  speaking, 
the  northern  half  of  European  Russia,  not  including 
Finland,  the  Baltic  provinces,  or  the  sub-arctic  regions. 
This  was  the  older  Russia;  in  it  lay  the  three  cities 
that  were  the  successive  seats  of  government  before 
the  founding  of  St.  Petersburg  —  Novgorod,  Kiev 
and  Moscow;  it  was,  in  fact,  the  nucleus  of  the  Rus- 
sian Empire.  But  the  colossal  empire  of  a  1914  map 
covered  far  more  than  Great  Russia,  and  it  is  per- 
haps the  map  with  its  uniform  coloring  that  deceives 
us  sometimes  into  thinking  of  the  people  governed  by 
Nicholas  II  as  homogeneous,  all  Russians.  The  truth 
is,  of  course,  far  otherwise.  Something  like  a  hun- 
dred millions  of  the  population  of  the  Empire  were  not 
even  Slavs.     The  Russia  of  the  Czar  was  a  vast,  com- 

has  seemed  to  bring  about  a  political  crisis.  The  Crimean  War 
of  1854-6  was  followed  by  the  reforms  of  Alexander  II;  the 
Riisso-Tiirkish  War  of  1877-8  was  followed  by  the  activities  of 
the  terrorists  and  the  murder  of  the  Czar;  the  war  with  Japan 
was  followed  by  the  forced  concession  of  a  constitution ;  and  the 
Great  War  brought  on  the  final  crisis  of  1917.  It  was  as  if  the 
rigid,  artificial  machinery  of  state  could  never  meet  a  severe 
strain  without  cracking  and  threatening  collapse. 


120         RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

plex  mass  held  together  solely  by  the  military  power 
of  an  autocrat.  Within  its  area  of  over  eight  million 
square  miles  it  is  estimated  that  103  languages  were 
spoken.  The  Turcomans  of  the  Trans-Caspian  desert, 
the  Georgians  of  the  Caucasus,  the  Tartars  of  the 
Volga,  the  Poles  of  Warsaw,  and  the  peasants  of  Great 
Russia  were  as  radically  different  in  race,  traditions, 
religion,  customs  and  tongue  as  Mexicans  and  Ameri- 
cans, Spaniards  and  English.  To  millions  of  these 
no  study  of  the  spirit  or  destiny  of  Russia  will  apply 
simply  because  they  were  part  of  Russia  only  by  an 
external  bond,  common  subjection  to  the  Czar. 

The  economic  cleavage  of  population  was  not  so 
profound  but  it  was  far  from  negligible.  Eighty  to 
eighty-five  per  cent  of  the  Russian  peoples,  both  in 
Great  Russia  and  the  provinces,  were  and  still  are 
peasants,  agriculturists,  intensely  conservative,  sub- 
merged in  the  Russian  apathy,  ignorant,  patient  and 
submissive,  indifferent  or  hostile  to  the  Revolution 
in  all  of  its  phases  except  one,  the  matter  of  the  land. 
Only  among  the  workingmen  of  the  towns,  the  stu- 
dents of  the  Universities,  the  more  liberal  sons  of  the 
landed  nobility  ^  and  the  professional  classes  can  we 

1  This  may  occasion  surprise  among  those  who  view  the  nobles 
as  invariably  narrow  and  moved  by  class  feeling,  but  it  need  not. 
Tolstoy,  Kropotkin  and  Catherine  P.reshkovsky,  to  name  the 
three  revolutionists  best  known  to  Americans,  were  all  "aristo- 
crats" by  birth. 


RUSSIAN    REVOLUTION 


121 


expect  to  find  signs  of  real  intellec.ua!  movement,  and 
it  is  in  this  numerically  small  group  that  we  must  look 
for  the  spiri"  of  the  Revolution. 

It  is  true  that  the  revolutionary  leaders  .poke  with 
enthusiasm  of  the  "  people,"  based  their  hopes  on  the 
peasants,  and  often  regarded  the  village  Mir  —  the 
democratic  commune  of  European  Russia  —  as  the 
ideal  community  of  the  future.  But  it  was  almost  im- 
possible for  the  most  earnest  of  the  missionaries  of  the 
revolution  to  move  the  peasantry  to  action.  Nothing 
in  the  story  of  modern  Russia  is  more  tragically  amus- 
ing than  the  account  by  Catherine  Breshkovsky,  the 
"  little  grandmother  of  the  Revolution,"  of  the  effort 
of  the  reformers  to  stir  the  sluggish  souls  of  the  "  peo- 
ple." ^  Many  of  the  leaders  deliberately  accepted  the 
conclusion  that  education  was  moic  important  than 
revolt,  and  that  a  long  period  of  slow  and  difficult  edu- 
cational agitation  must  precede  any  successful  attempt 
to  make  Russia  politically  free.  Others  simply  put 
the  peasants  to  one  side  in  their  immediate  calculations 
and  resolved  to  depend  solely  on  the  educated  minority, 
to  free  Russia  by  revolution  and  trust  to  the  future  for 
the  political  and  spiritual  emancipation  of  the  peasants. 
**  You,"  wrote  Turgenev  to  some  of  the  enthusiasts, 
"  are  supposing  that  revolutionary  or  reformatory  ele- 

1  The  Little  Grandmother  of  the  Russian  Revolution,  chapters 
4  and  5  (Boston,  Little,  Brown  &  Company,  1908). 


nl 


122 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


nicnts  exist  in  the  people.  In  reality  quite  the  oppo- 
site is  true.  Revolution  —  in  the  true  and  concrete 
meaning  of  the  word ;  I  might  say,  in  the  largest  mean- 
ing —  exists  only  in  the  minority  of  the  educated  class ; 
and  this  is  quite  sufficient  for  its  triumph,  if  only  we 
do  not  extirpate  ourselves  by  our  mutual  quarrels.  .  .  . 
The  role  of  the  educated  class  in  Russia  is  to  transmit 
civilization  to  the  people,  in  order  that  they  may  them- 
selves hereafter  decide  what  they  shall  accept  or  re- 
pudiate." But  in  the  meantime  the  people  themselves, 
or  at  any  rate  the  peasantry  of  over  one  hundred  mil- 
lion souls,  "  are  conserv'ative  par  excellence;  in  their 
sheepskins,  their  warm  and  dirty  hovels,  they  foster 
the  germs  of  a  bourgeoisie  which  will  leave  the  ill- 
famed  western  bourgeoisie  far  behind."  It  is  the  old 
story  of  all  peoples,  that  advance  and  redemption  are 
the  work  of  the  few,  and  that  if  the  work  be  well  done 
the  many,  in  the  fullness  of  time,  reap  the  reward. 

The  student  of  modern  Russia  must  then  do  three 
things.  He  must  first  frankly  recognize  the  complex- 
ity of  the  whole  problem.  Then  he  must  fix  firmly  in 
his  mind  the  external  landmarks  which  we  have  indi- 
cated above  until  such  dates  as  1861,  1905,  191 7  bring 
an  instant  and  exact  association  w'ith  definite  events. 
And  finally  he  must  forget  the  deceptive  word  "  peo- 
ple," regard  as  distinct  elements  in  the  situation  the 
peasants,  the  proletariat  or  wage-earners,  the  business 


RUSSIAN    REVOLUTION 


123 


and  professional  classes,  and  concentrate  his  attention 
on  the  one  dynamic  element  in  modern  Russia,  the  Rev- 
olution. So  far  as  we  are  concerned  the  history  of 
recent  times  means  the  history  of  the  movement  that 
began  in  the  liberalism  of  1825,  brought  about  the 
emancipation  of  the  serfs  and  the  creation  of  zemstvos 
and  doumas,  became  at  once  broader  and  more  intense 
in  the  sixties  ;tnd  seventies  as  nihilism,  developed  after 
1878  the  fierce  aspect  of  terrorism,  took  to  itself  the 
lessons  of  Marxian  socialism  after  1883,  finally  over- 
threw the  autocracy,  and  then  parted  into  battling  fac- 
tions after  the  victory  was  won. 

We  shall  confine  our  view  then  to  Great  Russia  and 
to  the  small  but  intensely  alive  minority  there  who 
aimed  through  weary  years  and  decades  at  the  redemp- 
tion of  their  country  through  revolution.  If  the  revo- 
lution should  overturn  Czarism  the  outer  rim  of  the 
Empire  might  be  expected  to  drop  away  —  temporarily 
at  any  rate  —  and  form  independent  states,  Poland, 
Finland,  Ukraine,  Georgia,  the  units  of  Central  Asia, 
Siberia  and  the  rest,  each  to  work  out  its  own  salvation. 
They  might  ultimately  form  a  federal  state,  as  loose 
as  the  British  Empire,  as  close  as  the  United  States 
of  America,  or  they  might  not.  But  in  any  case  they 
are  not  our  immediate  concern ;  the  possibility  of  a  free 
federation  of  all  the  sections  that  once  made  up  the 
Russia  of  the  map  is  for  the  future  to  determine.     For 


;  ill 


I! 

Ill 


124  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

the  moment  we  must  regard  the  provinces  as  separate 
problems  and  concentrate  on  Great  Russia,  the  nucleus 
around  which  the  whole  heterogeneous  empire  had  been 
built. 

For  Great  Russia  was  a  natural  unit  which  would 
probably  stand  or  fall,  become  free  or  remain  en- 
slaved, as  a  single  social  group.  Of  its  population  of 
about  sixty  millions  ten  per  cent  might  perhaps  con- 
stitute the  revolutionary  element,  though  this  is  little 
more  than  a  guess.  The  rest  were  either  indifferent  or 
loyal  to  the  existing  regime,  and  of  these  the  indiffer- 
ent, the  passively  loyal,  included  nearly  all  the  peasants, 
the  vast  majority  of  the  population.  Not  that  the 
peasants  were  contented.  They  were  not.  But  their 
sole  interest  was  in  secure  possession  of  their  land,  not 
in  political  change :  they  blamed  their  ills  on  landlords, 
agents,  officials  and  the  like,  not  on  the  Czar ;  and  their 
longing  for  relief  from  their  burdens  was  inarticulate, 
blind,  undirected  to  any  program  of  action.  The 
actual  burden  fell  on  the  few  who  saw  —  some  clearly, 
some  dimly  — the  vision  of  a  free  Russia,  and  who 
were  resolved  to  make  it  a  present  reality. 

These,  varying  greatly  in  their  intensity  of  convic- 
tion, in  their  honesty  of  purpose,  and  in  their  beliefs 
as  to  the  paths  to  be  followed,  may  be  grouped  in  three 
main  classes:  the  liberals,  the  anarchists,  and  the  so- 
cialists.    Of  these  the  anarchists,  a  great  force  in  the 


RUSSIAN   REVOLUTION 


"5 


nihilism  of  thirty  and  forty  years  ago,  had  ceased 
long  before  191 7  to  be  a  considerable  element  in  the 
revolution.  We  may,  perhaps,  ignore  anarchism  there- 
fore, and  consider  liberalism  and  socialism  as  the  two 
great  forces  that  have  moved  Russia  during  recent 
years.  Remembering,  however,  that  they  are  both 
only  an  expression  and  a  formulation  of  something 
infinitely  greater  than  either  —  the  passionate  desire 
for  liberty.  In  the  breasts  of  peasants,  factory  work- 
ers, merchants,  students,  of  every  thinking  Russian 
indeed  except  the  Slavophils  and  those  whose  interests 
or  whose  prejudices  bound  them  solidly  to  the  auto- 
cratic regime,  surged  the  yearning  for  relief  from 
an  intolerable  burden.  Often  the  burden  was  felt 
merely  as  a  physical  one  and  was  purely  economic  — 
a  tyranny  not  clearly  localized  or  diagnosed  but  in- 
volving actual  hunger  and  suffering.  Often  it  was  a 
spiritual  one,  the  forbidding  of  normal  and  compelling 
intellectual,  social  or  ethical  activities.  Often  it  was 
a  generous  resentment  at  the  sight  of  good  men  and 
women  sent  to  prison  or  to  Siberia,  of  innocent  people 
shot  down  or  tortured.  Often  it  was  negative,  hardly 
at  all  constructive.  But  with  all  its  varieties  of  mo- 
tive and  aim  it  was  fundamentally  a  movement  of  op- 
pressed humanity  against  an  inefficient,  brutal,  irra- 
tional machine,  and  it  did  take  the  two  main  forms  of 
liberalism  and  socialism. 


i  < 


126  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


To  one  who  has  studied  the  liberalism  of  western 
Europe  the  liberalism  of  Russia — active  in  1825, 
dormant  for  fifty  }ears,  then  active  again  towards  the 
end  of  the  19th  century  —  is  not  difficult  of  compre- 
hension. The  liberal  may  be  ready  to  recognize  that 
many  of  the  evils  from  which  the  people  suffer  are 
economic.  He  knows  that  there  is  wretchedness  and 
degradation  in  America  and  England  notwithstanding 
their  free  institutions.  He  may  admit  to  the  full  the 
contention  that  there  are  deadly  ills  in  society  that  have 
apparently  little  or  nothing  to  do  with  politics.  And 
he  may  even  admit  that  private  ownership  of  land  and 
capital  has  something  to  do  with  social  ills  and  may 
well  be  examined,  placed  under  restrictions,  perhaps 
be  limited  or  abolished.  But  he  is  primarily  inter- 
ested in  the  securing  of  politcal  liberty.  Once  the 
state  is  made  essentially  democratic,  once  government 
of  the  people  is  firmly  established,  once  freedom  from 
arbitrary  imprisonment,  arbitrary  taxation,  arbitrary 
legislation  and  an  irresponsible  executive  is  definitely 
secured,  then  social  reforms  may  be  carried  through 
according  to  the  wish  of  the  sovereign  people.  Politi- 
cal liberty  is  the  foundation  stone.  W^ithout  it  noth- 
ing permanently  good  is  likely  to  be  achieved,  welcome 
as  the  isolated  good  deeds  of  an  autocrat  —  such  as 
the  emancipation  of  the  serfs  —  may  be.  With  it  an 
infinite  degree  of  progress  becomes  possible. 


RUSSIAN    REVOLUTION 


127 


Moreover  political  liberty  is  a  fairly  definite  and  spe- 
cific thing  on  vhich  all  may  agree  and  which  the  expe- 
rience of  America  and  wester.i  Europe  has  shown  to  be 
perfectly  feasible.     Social  reform,  on  the  other  hand,  is 
a  slow  and  difficult  matter,  and  a  social  and  economic 
revolution  is  'ormidable  beyond  anything  the  human 
race  has  yet  attempted  —  formidable  not  only  in  its 
inherent  difficulty  and  complexity  but  in  the  fact  that 
many  good  and  wise  men  are  opposed  to  it,  perhaps 
even  the  majority.     To  defy  a  tyrant  and  to  substi- 
tute for  tyranny  government  by  the  people  is  a  matter 
in  which  all  may  unite;  but  to  defy  one's  own  loyal 
comrades  in  the  midst  of  the  battle  and  to  excite  dis- 
union and  internal  dissensions  while  the  struggle  is 
still  going  on  is  unwise.     Liberalism,  therefore,  aims 
primarily   at   political   liberty  —  government   by   the 
people. 

Now  the  Czar  who  had  emancipated  the  serfs,  Alex- 
ander II,  had  also  instituted  popular  representative 
assemblies,  the  Zemstvos  in  the  country  districts  and 
the  Doumas  in  the  towns.  These  had  been  so  restricted 
both  as  to  electorate  and  as  to  power  that  they  came 
to  be  of  little  significance  in  actual  government.  Still 
they  provided  a  starting  point.  All  that  needed  to  be 
done  was  to  make  these  bodies  really  representative,  to 
;^ive  them  a  large  local  power,  and  ro  institute  a  simi- 
lar assembly  —  an  Imperial  Douma  —  that  would  rep- 


)  ii 

il 


128         RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


resent  the  whole  people.  Then  with  these  local  and, 
national  popular  legislatures  and  the  erection  of  an 
executive  responsible  solely  to  the  people  or  to  the  peo- 
ple's representatives,  liberty  would  be  assured.  There- 
after social  reforms  would  be  in  the  hands  of  the  peo- 
ple, and  could  go  on  as  they  go  on  in  America,  Eng- 
land or  France  —  too  slowly  for  the  impatient,  per- 
haps, but  keeping  pace  with  the  desires  and  progressive 
enlightenment  of  the  nation.  This  program  could  be 
entered  upon,  if  such  seemed  desirable,  even  with  the 
Czar  on  the  throne.  England  and  Italy  have  kings, 
and  the  most  far-reaching  of  the  reforms  of  the  French 
Revolution  were  carried  through  betwt  1789  and 
1792,  while  Louis  XVI  was  still  king  of  France.  Or 
a  republic  could  be  organized.  The  matter  of  mon- 
archical or  republican  form  was  a  detail  and  not  a 
fundamental  one.  The  essential  thing  was  to  place 
the  actual  government  in  the  hands  of  the  people,  to 
remove  the  intolerable  burden  of  arbitrary  and  irre- 
sponsible rule,  to  achieve  liberty. 

In  this  spirit  the  Revolution  of  1905  was  begun  and 
carried  through.  It  was  to  a  great  extent  a  failure. 
It  did  see  the  creation  of  an  Imperial  Douma,  but  the 
executive  machinery  and  the  bureaucracy  remained  be- 
yond popular  control,  and  the  Douma  between  1907 
and  19 1 7  was  an  empty  form,  a  debating  society,  po- 
tentially of  immense  value  but  devoid  of  actual  power. 


RUSSIAN   REVOLUTION 


129 


It  was  in  these  years  that  the  government  of  the  Czar 
was  proved  incurable,— rigid,  faithless,  corrupt  and 
blind.  So  in  March,  19 17,  the  Revolution  reachvi  its 
second  phase ;  the  Czar  abdicated ;  and  from  March  to 
July  the  government  of  Russia  was  in  the  hands  of  lib- 
erals supported  by  the  moderate  socialists.*  Then  a 
third  wave  of  revolution  in  July  swept  the  liberals  from 
power ;  the  great  socialist  leader  Kerensky  became  head 
of  the  government ;  and  he  in  turn  was  overthrown  in 
November  by  the  more  extreme  group  known  as  Bol- 
sheviki.     Socialism    had    stipplanted    liberalism    at 

Petrograd. 

And  when  we  say  socialism  we  mean  Marxian  so- 
cialism. As  we  use  the  word  in  ordinary  careless 
speech  it  is  apt  to  mean  almost  any  movement  that 
seeks  to  abolish  distinctions  of  class  and  wealth.  If 
we  use  it  more  carefully  we  mean,  usually,  any  move- 

1  In  this  first  Provisional  Government  the  best  known  figures 
were  Prince  Lvoff,  the  Premier,  Professor  Miliukoflf,  Minister 
for  Foreign  Affairs.  GutchkoflF,  Minister  of  War,  Tereshtchenko, 
Minister  of  Finance,  and  Kerensky,  Minister  of  Justice  and  then 
after  Gutchkoff's  resignation  Minister  of  War.  Kerensky  was 
the  link  between  his  colleagues  and  the  Radicals  of  the  Council 
of  Soldiers'  and  Workmen's  Deputies. 

For  the  most  part  we  have  still  to  rely  on  periodicals,  notably 
the  New  York  Times  Current  History,  for  such  knowledge  as 
has  been  available  for  the  last  two  years.  But  there  are  three 
interesting  and  informing  narratives  that  taken  together  give  a 
connected  story  of  the  successive  phases  of  the  revolution,  Mar- 
cosson's  Re-Birth  of  Russia,  Ross,  The  Russian  Upheaval,  and 
Ernest  Poole,  The  Dark  People. 


Uo 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND    NATIONAL   LIFE 


ment  that  will  bridge  the  gulf  between  labor,  on  the 
one  hand,  and  capital  and  land  on  the  other.  We  think 
of  the  familiar  argument  that  labor  really  produces  all 
wealth,  but  that  lalx)r  is  helpless  without  capital  and 
land;  that  consequently  lalx)r  is  the  slave  of  capitalists 
and  land  holders ;  and  that  the  correction  of  this  evil  — 
a  far  more  fundamental  evil  than  any  merely  political 
tyranny  —  is  the  great  social  problem  of  the  present 
and  future.  In  a  general  way  this  is  a  reasonably  true 
conception  of  socialism.  But  as  to  the  actual  means 
of  realizing  this  aim  socialists  have  been  far  indeed 
from  agreement,  and  the  dominant  socialism  of  to-day 
is  that  which  has  followed  the  leadership  of  Karl 
Marx.  We  have  already  indicated  the  nature  and 
development  of  Marxian  socialism  in  Germany.  We 
have  now  to  see  what  it  means  in  Russia. 

It  will  be  remembered  that  the  reforming  move- 
ments of  1825  to  1861,  the  nihilist  movement  after 
1866,  and  the  terrorist  war  of  assassination  that  began 
about  1878  were  all  movements  of  no  single  creed. 
They  were  inspired  largely  by  the  great  spiritual  forces 
that  were  stirring  England,  France,  Germany  and 
Italy,  and  they  aimed  at  the  attainment  of  liberty  — 
whether  by  the  education  of  the  masses,  by  ^^  in  fully 
won  political  and  social  reforms,  by  the  kming  of 
Czars  and  chiefs  of  police,  by  the  centering  of  all 
functions  of  government  in  the  Mir  —  the  village  com- 


RUSSIAN    KF.VOl.UTION 


13  t 


munity  —  or  by  anarchi>m,  the  total  destruction  of  all 
government  by  armed  revolution.  Their  leaders  were 
men  like  llerzcn  —a  socialist  of  the  older  type  who 
would  be  content  to  go  slowly,  keeping,  as  he  said, 
"one  step  ahead  of  the  people  but  not  two  steps" — 
like  Lavrov  or  Kropotkin,  educational  anarchists  who 
believed  in  missionary  work  that  would  gradually  bring 
the  people  up  to  the  necessary  level  of  enlightenment 
and  initiative  for  the  realization  of  a  stable  and  wise 
freedom  —  and  like  Bakunin,  a  revolunonary  anarchist 
who  would  clear  away  in  one  wild  conflagration  all  the 
accumulated  rubbish  of  laws  and  governments  and  go 
back  to  a  "  state  of  nature."  And  there  were  all  de- 
grees of  radicalism  and  passion  from  Bakunin  and  the 
terrorists  to  the  thoughtful  but  passive  ones  who  de- 
spised the  existing  power  and  sympathized  with  the 
malcontents  but  who  could  not  make  up  their  minds 
to  action  or  who  feared  the  tempest  that  a  successful 
revolution  would  let  loose.  All  of  these  were  in  agree- 
mert  as  to  criticism,  as  to  negation ;  but  as  to  the  path 
of  positive  advance  they  differed  greatly,  their  doc- 
trines only  resembling  one  another  in  their  "  Utopian  " 
idealism. 

But  in  the  years  after  the  murder  of  Alexander  II, 
i.e.,  during  the  reigns  of  Alexander  III  and  Nich- 
olas II,  Marxian  socialism  began  to  filter  into  Russia. 
Anarchism  and  communism  gradually  lost  their  hold. 


132 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND   MATIONAL  LIFE 


Professor   Miliukov   could   say   in    1905    that   "no 
anarchism  exists  in  Russia."     It  had  had  its  day  when 
the  only  hope  of  a  desperate  people  seemed  to  lie  in 
destruction.     Not  that  philosophical  anarchism  has 
not  its  constructive  side.     It  has.     But  it  is  not  the 
side  that  appeals  to  the  average  man  simply  because 
its  Heaven  is  a  distant  one,  to  be  attained  by  labor, 
education  and  self-restraint.     To  most  of  its  disciples 
anarchism  has  always  meant  destruction  and  little  else, 
a  most  natural  and  human  war-cry  whan  one  is  smoth- 
ered and  tortured  by  a  powerful  and  deadly  force,  but 
not  a  permanent  ideal.     So  that  Marxian  socialism 
with  its  collective  ownership  of  land  and  capital  pro- 
vided just  what  anarchism  and  communism  lacked  — 
a  logical,  scientific  basis,  a  definite,  constructive  pro- 
gram, liberation  from  both  economic  and  political  op- 
pression, a  golden  vista  of  a  road  to  the  heights  that 
was  solidly  based  —  it  was  thought  —  on  reason  and 
facts,  that  was  free,  orderly  and  final.     And  it  had 
a  clear  and  compelling  slogan :     "  Workers  of  the 
world,  unite ! " 

So  anarchism  faded  away.  The  older  socialism  of 
the  commune  became  out-of-date.  Those  of  the  revo- 
lutionaries who  felt  that  whether  Marx  was  right  or 
wrong  social  reform  should  be  postponed  and  a  demo- 
cratic state  achieved  before  anything  else  was  at- 
tempted gathered  in  the  liberal  party  of  the  Constitu- 


RUSSIAN    REVOLUTION 


133 


tional  Democrats  or  Cadets,  and  with  these  went  many 
of  the  older  warriors  of  the  cause,  the  enemies  of  the 
Czar  rather  than  of  the  capitahsts.  But  the  more  im- 
passioned radicals  adopted  the  Marxian  doctrine  with 
enthusiasm.  The  strength  of  the  Cadets  lay  in  the 
professional  and  business  classes,  the  bourgeois;  the 
strength  of  the  socialists  lay  in  the  proletariat  of  the 
towns;  and  holding  aloof  from  both  parties  stood  the 
great  mass  of  the  peasants  with  their  one  political 
creed  and  demand,  the  land  to  the  cultivator. 

Early  in  the  revolution  it  became  evident  that  the 
socialists  were  likely  to  dominate  the  situation.  And 
then  appeared  the  familiar  conflict  between  extremists 
and  moderates.  There  was  little  or  no  disagreement 
between,  let  us  say,  Kerensky  and  Trotzky  as  to  the 
ultimate  goal.  Both  believed  in  the  socialist  state. 
But  Kerensky,  like  Marx  himself  and  like  the  majority 
of  Social  Democrats  and  Social  Revolutionaries 
throughout  the  world,  regarded  the  attainment  of  the 
socialist  ideal  as  a  matter  of  organic  growth,  no  more 
to  be  realized  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye  than  a  child 
becomes  a  man  over  night.  Thus,  for  instance,  there 
was  universal  agreement  as  to  the  redistribution  of  the 
land.  But  even  Kropotkin,  anarchist  as  he  was,  agreed 
with  the  moderate  sociali.sts  in  regard  to  the  complexity 
of  even  so  necessary  a  reform  and  advised  against 
haste  on  the  grounds  that  it  would  mean  confusion,  in- 


134 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL  LIFE 


U  * 


justice,  and  infinite  quarreling.  One  may  condemn  a 
cancer  and  may  also  condemn  its  removal  by  one  sweep 
of  the  knife.  But  to  a  certain  temperament  such  hesi- 
tancy smacks  of  treason,  and  it  is  always  easier  for 
the  impatient  fanatic  to  win  the  applause  of  an  un- 
disciplined multitude  than  it  is  for  one  more  cautious. 

From  the  outset  of  the  revolution  the  Council  of 
Soldiers*  and  Workers'  Deputies  —  practically  all  ex- 
treme socialists  or  Bolsheviki  —  were  a  thorn  in  the 
side  of  the  Provisional  Government  and  the  Douma. 
The  Council  represented  the  proletariat,  not  the  people, 
and  it  had  all  the  fury  and  fanaticism  of  the  Jacobin 
Club,  with  the  same  fervor  for  a  gospel  that  was  to 
bring  confusion  to  tyrants,  i.e.,  the  bourgeois,  and  a 
golden  age  to  the  faithful.  Its  leaders  were  advocates 
of  immediate  and  radical  reconstruction  on  socialist 
principles.  Their  fierce  enthusiasm  led  first  to  the 
retirement  of  the  liberal  ministers  of  the  Provisional 
government,  then  to  the  retirement  of  Kerensky,  then 
by  a  pathetic  irony  to  the  exile  of  men  and  women  who 
had  suffered  under  the  old  regime,  who  had  borne  for 
years  the  burden  of  the  revolution,  and  who  were  now 
spurned  by  the  wild  ardor  of  those  who  reaped  where 
others  had  sown. 

And  so  we  have  Bolshevist  Russia,  a  marvel  and  a 
portent  to  the  world  throughout  1918,  crumbling  now 
and  perhaps  to  give  way  to  a  new  phase  before  another 


RUSSIAN    REVOLUTION 


135 


month  is  past,  but  still  dominant  in  Petrograd  as  these 
words  are  written.     Here  is  part  of  its  platform;  ^ 

1.  To  effect  the  socialization  of  the  land,  private 
ownership  of  the  land  is  abolished,  and  the  whole 
land  fund  is  declared  national  property  and  trans- 
ferred to  the  laborers  without  compensation,  on  the 
basis  of  equalized  use  of  the  soil. 

2.  The  Soviet  law  of  labor  control  and  the  Su- 
preme Board  of  National  Economy  are  confirmed, 
with  a  view  to  securing  the  authority  of  the  toilers 
over  the  exploiters,  as  the  first  step  to  the  com- 
plete transfer  of  all  factories,  mills,  mines,  railways, 
and  other  means  of  production  and  transportation 
to  the  ownership  of  the  Workmen's  and  Peasants' 
Soviet  Republic. 

3.  The  transfer  of  all  banks  into  the  ownership 
of  the  Workers'  and  Peasants'  state  is  confirmed,  it 
being  one  of  the  conditions  of  the  emancipation  of 
the  laboring  masses  from  the  yoke  of  capital. 

4.  With  a  v'  the  destruction  of  the  parasitic 
classes  of  soci  nd  the  organization  of  the  na- 
tional economy,  aaiversal  labor  service  is  established. 

5.  In  the  interest  of  securing  all  the  power  for  the 

1  Taken  from  the  Nation  (New  York)  of  December  28,  1918. 
These  paragraphs  are  contained  in  a  resolution  submitted  by 
Lenine  and  Trotzky  to  the  Constituent  Assembly  that  met  Jan- 
uary 18,  1918.  The  Assembly  proved  to  be  hostile  to  Bolshevik 
rule  and  was  dissolved  after  one  stormy  session. 


b 


136         RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


!(  ' 


laboring  masses  and  the  elimination  of  any  possi- 
bility of  the  reestablishment  of  the  power  of  ex- 
ploiters, the  arming  of  the  toilers,  the  formation  of 
a  socialistic  red  army  of  workmen  and  peasants,  and 
the  complete  disarmament  of  the  wealthy  classes  are 
decreed. 


I 


It  is  a  document  well  worthy  of  careful  study,  apart 
altogether  from  our  opinions  as  to  the  validity  of  its 
principles.  German  in  its  origin,  the  program  is  ab- 
solutely Russian  in  its  mysticism,  in  its  adoration  of  a 
light  that  dazzles  and  fascinates  —  sadly  Russian 
moreover  in  that  the  light  came  from  the  west,  and  that 
its  alien  beams  lit  only  the  spiritual  mountain  tops, 
leaving  in  darkness  the  brutal  facts. 

For  the  Germans  were  in  Poland  and  Riga,  and  there 
were  a  hundred  million  people  in  Russia  to  whom  the 
"  class  war,"  capitalistic  tyranny,  the  emancipation  of 
the  proletariat  were  words  without  meaning,  who  cared 
nothing  for  votes  and  seats  in  Parliament,  and  whose 
sole  desire  was  land  to  cultivate  and  the  opportunity 
to  live  in  peace. 

As  these  pages  go  to  press  Russia  is  still  torn  by 
factions,  and  Poland.  Great  Russia  and  the  Ukraine 
are  in  the  agony  of  a  civil  war  that  may  be  ended  or 
may  be  embittered  —  we  can  only  hope  the  former  — 
by  the  allied  army  of  intervention  that  is  fighting  its 


RUSSIAN    REVOLUTION 


137 


way  toward  Petrograd.  Whatever  be  the  outcome  of 
these  turbulent  and  wretched  months,  the  issues  will 
remain  between  the  moderate  socialists,  the  Bolsheviks, 
and  the  liberals,  for  the  peasants  as  a  whole  are  of  no 
party  and  desire  only  peace.  Bolshevism  is  probably 
only  a  phase  and  a  passing  one.  It  is  simply  socialism 
consumed  with  a  human  but  futile  passion  for  immedi- 
ate realization.  As  to  socialism  itself  one  hesitates 
to  make  any  absolute  pronouncement,  but  it  is  permis- 
sible to  express  an  opinion.  To  say  that  it  is  German, 
not  Russian,  is  true  but  not  particularly  significant;  it 
is  unfortunate,  perhaps,  but  certainly  not  disastrous 
that  Russia  has  often  owed  her  ideas  to  the  west,  is 
facile  in  borrowing  and  adapting.^  It  is  more  signifi- 
cant to  point  out  that  the  Marxian  gospel  is  essen- 
tially a  gospel  for  a  highly  industrial  society.  Marx 
wrote  Das  Kapital  in  England,  and  he  himself  believed 
that  England,  the  workshop  of  the  world,  was  ripe  for 
his  doctrine  beyond  any  other  country  of  his  time, 
while  of  Russia's  180,000,000  possibly  ten  per  cent 
are  real  proletarians.  As  has  often  been  remarked 
the  Russian  temperament  and  tradition  is  in  its  own 
way  intensely  democratic,  but  it  is  not  particularly 
Marxian.     Tolstoyan    anarchism    is    infinitely    more 

1 "  We  Russians  have  chosen  to  live  on  other  people's  ideas, 
and  we  are  saturated  with  them,"  says  a  student  in  Dostoyev- 
sky's  Crime  and  Punishment. 


138 


RECONSTRUCTION  AND   NATIONAL  LIFE 


truly  Russian  than  is  socialism,  and  even  orthodox  so- 
cialism in  Russia  would,  one  suspects,  become  its  own 
antithesis,  government  ^  "  the  few  —  and  those  few 
not  the  workers.  So  that  even  the  more  moderate 
forms  of  socialism  would  seem  to  be  alien  and  aca- 
demic, little  related  to  the  national  life  of  Russia. 

Whether  the  present  disorder  will  lead  to  reaction, 
or  whether  foreign  intervention  will  produce  new  dis- 
eases, or  whether  the  fervor  of  191 8  will  insensibly 
die  away  into  some  workable  scheme,  socialistic  or 
otherwise,  remains  to  be  seen.  It  would  indeed  be  a 
daring  prophet  who  would  venture  to  forecast  the 
progress  of  events  during  the  next  year  or  the  next 
month.  The  poetic  mysticism,  the  uncompromising 
idealism,  the  noble  sincerity  that  are  the  outstanding 
characteristics  of  the  Russians,  the  immense  patience, 
ignorance,  credulity  and  conservatism  of  the  peasants, 
the  lack  of  traditions  —  whether  inspiring  or  confin- 
ing —  that  might  guide  and  balance  in  the  building  of 
a  free  political  structure,  render  one  doubtful  in  ap- 
plying any  parallel  from  the  revolutions  of  the  western 
peoples.  It  was  perhaps  inevitable  that  Russia  should 
face  the  colossal  problem  of  social  and  economic  recon- 
struction before  political  liberty  was  assured  and  while 
the  Pr'jssian  invaders  were  burning  and  slaughtering' 
within  a  few  days'  march  of  Petrograd.  Russia  is 
nothing  if  not  unpractical.    Yet  it  is  one  of  the  most 


RUSSIAN   REVOLUTION 


139 


amazing  and  most  pathetic  spectacles  of  history  to  see 
a  Mary  among  the  nations,  to  adopt  Stephen  Graham's 
parallel/  facing  a  task  that  might  well  daunt  the  most 
capable  and  efficient  of  Marthas.  When  we  doubt  the 
ultimate  success  of  socialism  in  Russia  it  is  not  because 
we  are  condemning  socialism  itself;  it  is  because  a 
people  so  far  conspicuously  lacking  in  the  gift  of  prac- 
tical organization  should  attempt  the  most  tremendous 
task  of  social  reconstruction  ever  attempted  since  the 
world  began. 

Yet  we  of  the  more  practical  west  may  stand  in 
amazement,  perhaps,  but  in  some  reverence  too  before 
a  people  who  have  dreams  that  they  willingly  die  for, 
whose  idealism  may  fall  away  from  unworthy  leaders 
but  may  be  trusted  to  flame  again  in  its  never  ending 
passion  for  final  truth,  for  divine  perfecticm  —  an 
idealism  infinitely  less  practical  than  that  of  clear- 
thinking  France  or  of  scientific,  well-disciplined  Ger- 
many. It  is  the  naive  and  childlike  faith  of  Russia, 
the  impossible  simplicity  of  Ivan  Durak,  "  to  the  Jews 
a  stumbling  block  and  to  the  Gentiles  foolishness," 
that  confounds  us  and  makes  us  hesitate  to  apply  our 
ordinary  standards  of  judgment. 

After  all  the  essential  fact  is  that  Russia  is  awaken- 
ing.    Even  the  humblest  peasant  prizes  his  newly  won 

1  Graham,  The  Way  of  Martha  and  the  Way  of  Mary  (New 
York,  1917). 


140         RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL  LIFE 


i' 


\i       1 


and  still  insecure  freedom,  little  as  he  cares  what  gov- 
ernment holds  sway  at  Moscow  or  Petrograd.  And 
if  Russia  is  still  bewildered,  easily  deceived,  prone  to 
trust  others,  yet  the  Slavic  apathy  is  breaking,  and  the 
wings  of  her  idealism  may  carry  her  to  heights  beyond 
the  power  of  our  firmer,  more  cautious  climbing.  The 
supreme  prophet  of  Russia  may  have  uttered  the  alle- 
gory of  his  people  in  words  that  he  applied  to  himself: 
"  There  are  men  with  powerful  wings  whom  pleasure 
leads  to  alight  in  the  midst  of  the  crowd,  when  their 
wings  are  broken;  such,  for  instance,  am  I.  Then 
they  beat  their  broken  wings ;  they  launch  themselves 
desperately,  but  fall  again.  The  wings  will  mend.  I 
shall  fly  high.  May  God  help  me !  "  ^  So  with  Rus- 
sia. The  wings  will  mend.  She  will  fly  high.  May 
God  help  her ! 

iTolstoy's  Journal.  October  28,  1879.    Quoted  in  Remain  Rol- 
land,  Tolstoy,  pp.  306-307  (New  York,  1911). 


VIII 


British  Liberty  and  the  Empire 


Of  all  the  countries  of  Europe  England  is  appar- 
ently least  in  need  of  radical  reconstruction.  It  has 
become  a  truism  to  say  that  her  history  is  the  history 
not  of  sudden  and  dramatic  changes  but  of  slow  and 
cautious  advance.  The  foundations  of  her  political 
structure  are  so  deeply  and  firmly  laid  in  the  experience 
of  a  thousand  years  that  no  shock  seems  likely  now  to 
overthrow  it.  But  Britain's  political  stability  does  not 
mean  political  rigidity,  nor  does  it  involve  freedom 
from  national  problems  of  the  first  magnitude.  The 
impression  that  we  have  of  a  certain  security  and  pla- 
cidity in  England  is  partly  a  just  one ;  the  solidity  and 
elasticity  of  her  governmental  organization,  the  ease 
and  steadiness  with  which  her  constitution  has  met 
every  shock,  developing  by  constant  readjustment,  both 
reflect  and  react  upon  the  British  character.  But  the 
words  solidity,  elasticity,  readjustment  are  used  ad- 
visedly. If  solidity  is  our  first  impression  elasticity  is 
the  second.  It  is  not  quite  true  that  there  have  been 
no  revolutions  in  English  history,  nor  is  it  certain  that 

141 


142 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


there  will  be  none  in  the  future.  The  instructive  thing 
is  not  the  absence  of  dramatic  moments  and  of  crises 
but  their  character  and  their  outcome.  And  the  study 
of  these  crises  in  the  past  is  the  surest  way  in  which  to 
see  both  the  basis  on  which  British  liberty  rests  and 
the  way  in  which  present  and  future  problems  both  of 
freedom  and  of  empire  are  likely  to  be  met. 

Let  us  take  our  stand  first  at  the  period  of  the  Amer- 
ican Revolution.  "  The  body  of  this  people,"  wrote 
Benjamin  Franklin  of  the  English  in  1769,  '*  is  of  a 
noble  and  generous  nature,  loving  and  honoring  the 
spirit  of  liberty,  and  hating  arbitrary  power  of  all 
sorts."  The  observation  was  a  true  one,  and  this  spirit 
of  Hberty,  this  hatred  of  arbitrary  power  was  based  on 
specific  and  definite  facts.  Actual  liberty  is  always  a 
matter  of  compromise;  in  the  freest  lands  of  the  twen- 
tieth century  there  are  miscarriages  of  justice,  re- 
straints of  freedom;  but  in  the  main  it  is  true  that  in 
eighteenth  century  England  arbitrary  imprisonment, 
arbitrary  taxation  and  arbitrary  legislation  were  things 
of  the  past.  Moreover  the  government  was  directly 
and  absolutely  responsible  to  Parliament,  and  the 
dominant  House  of  Parliament,  the  Commons,  in 
theory  at  least  represented  the  English  people.  Much 
remained  to  be  done,  assuredly,  before  England  could 
be  called  a  democracy,  but  much  had  been  achieved. 


BRITISH    LIBERTY    AND  THE   EMPIRE 


143 


And  it  had  been  achieved  by  definite  steps  in  a  slow  but 
unbroken  progress. 

The  traditions  of  English  liberty  went  back  to  Al:red 
the  Great;  back  indeed  to  the  unrecorded  ages  before 
the  English  came  to  Kent.  George  Washington  and 
William  Pitt  alike  could  look  back  to  the  ancient  cus- 
tom by  which  every  township  was  governed  by  its  town 
meeting,  by  which  every  hundred  was  governed  by  its 
assembly  of  delegates  from  the  towns,  and  by  which 
every  county  was  governed  by  its  folk-moot,  a  repre- 
sentative council  made  up  of  elected  deputies  from  the 
towns  and  hundreds.  The  national  council  of  Saxon 
England  was  indeed  an  assembly  of  nobles,  but  in  every 
shire  the  machinery  of  self-government  and  much  of 
its  spirit  remained  intact  from  the  half-mythical  age 
of  Hengist  and  Horsa  to  the  time  of  Edward  the  Con- 
fessor. English  liberty  was  not  always  actual  in  those 
days  but  it  was  a  vital  and  stubbornly  held  tradition, 
and  a  tradition  partly  expressed  in  law  and  fact. 

Then  came  the  Norman  Conquest.  Like  all  mili- 
tary conquests  it  had  its  brutal  side,  meant  shock  and 
violent  readjustment.  But  it  consolidated  England 
nevertheless,  and  by  virtue  of  the  clearer  issue  between 
foreign  kings  and  barons  on  the  one  hand  and  the  peo- 
ple on  the  other  it  led  to  a  crystallizing  of  the  old  tra- 
dition of  freedom.     The  vague  notions  of  liberty  were 


144         RECONSTRUCTIOM    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

expressed  in  the  desire  for  a  re-affirming  of  the  laws 
and  customs  of  Edward  the  (  onfe^.^or,  and  this  was 
conceded  by  the  Norman  kinr^^  —  nci  unwilling  to  se- 
cure the  grateful  loyalty  of  ih -  English  as  a  check  to 
the  lawless  pride  of  the  wolves  in  ariTVii  who  -egarded 
the  land  as  booty  and  the  king  as  Uik  more  than  the 
leader  of  the  pack. 

But  freedom  of  person,  security  of  property,  and  the 
exercise  of  even  a  small  degree  of  local  self-c  vernment 
were  held  by  a  slender  and  insecure  tenure.  The  obvi- 
ous need  was  for  some  definite  progress  toward  protec- 
tion from  arbitrary  power  anl  a  real  share  in  the  gov- 
ernment. The  former  was  gained  when  th.  Great 
Charter  was  signed  in  121 5;  the  latter  when  Sinion  de 
Montfort  summoned  a  House  of  Commons  in  1265 
and  more  permanently  when  Edward  I  called  repre- 
sentatives of  the  towns  to  sit  beside  the  baron  in  the 
Parliament  of  1295.  These  gains  were  far  from  final, 
but  they  represent  a  long  step  forward  nevertheless. 
The  Charter  gave  England  a  standard  and  a  definition 
of  liberty  that  was  never  wholly  forgotten;  and  the 
representation  of  the  towns  in  the  national  assemlsiy 
was  the  beginning  of  the  progress  that  was  to  lead  in 
time  to  the  democracy  of  the  twentieth  century.  Th-  e 
still  remained  the  confirming,  the  <;olid  establishifig  ^f 
these  "  rights  of  Englishmen.  e  securing  f  -•  ?he 
House  of  Commons  of  not  mert      a  share  in  gov    n- 


BRITISH    LIBLi-TY    AND   ^HE   EMPIRE 


145 


ment  but  control,  and  he  m?  .ing  of  Parliament  the 
true  voice  of  all  England. 

ihe  attainment  of  the  nnt  of  thes?  was  f5afel_v  det  t- 
miwd  by  th^  Revf  ution  the  s;  vciitee  -.n  entury. 
It  was  four  hu  ulrt  l  yea»s  c  uer  >  ^igi.  i  Carta  before 
Mie  Eng'  h  town^  wt  e  read}  to  3^  -  wit  onfidence 
and  convict'on  ilieir  ght  to  '1'  <  v>'  e  se  re 
foundation  for  nt-  son.n  iibert  ' -^ «  uig         e 

in  governmc  t.  The  ■  ndal  -  h;  wen  long  s.  e 
shorn  of  all  ucir  p'"  s  ex'  p,  those  still  held  by  the 
Hoi'se  )f  Lords.  Th-  s  'teenth  century  conflict 
was  not  ith  th  nobtes  ut  with  the  Stuart  kings 
and  their  tsser  n  oi  a  r  it  to  govern  independently 
of    lie  natit  n's      11.     T  suit  was  decisive.     After 

1(88  the  Parliament  ^  >verned  I  gland;  in  Parliament 
tl  Hou-e  of  Common  was  the  controlling  partner; 
there  V  a?  no  taxation  or  legislation  without  the  con- 
se-  f  the  nati'  lal  assi.  .nbly,  no  imprisonment  or  pun- 
is       nr  \vi   tout,    air  trial  before  judge  and  jury. 

0..e  f  rthor  ste*^  was  needed  to  make  the  Revolu- 
tion I  -r  .  lete,  ar.d  v  taken  before  the  century  of 
Hanipckn  and  Crot  ell  came  to  an  end.  This  was 
the  (1  Hnite  determination  of  the  responsibility  of  the 
kn^r'  ninisters  to  Parliament,  the  creation  of  what 
is  :n  now  as  the  Cabinet  system.     Thereafter  the 

I  ng,  according  to  his  personal  qualities,  might  be  an 
ir    lence  but  ceased  to  have  any  direct  power.     His 


.<   .i 


-V 


146  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

ministers  were  practically  a  committee  of  Parliament. 
The  loss  of  the  confidence  and  support  of  the  House 
of  Commons  meant  the  resignation  of  the  entire  cabi- 
net, its  reconstruction  or  replacement.  It  might  be 
posjible  indeed  for  kings  or  statesmen  to  thwart  the 
will  of  the  nation  by  manipulation,  by  schemes  analo- 
gous to  the  shifty  devices  of  the  modern  "  boss."  And 
this  was  a  very  real  danger,  illustrated  only  too  well  in 
the  period  from  the  accession  of  George  III  to  the 
treaty  that  acknowledged  the  independence  of  the 
American  colonies.  But  this  is  a  danger  against  which 
even  democracy  is  not  secure,  a  danger  not  acute  so  far 
as  kingly  power  is  concerned  since  1783  but  far  from 
removed  even  yet  in  its  other  aspects,  removable  in- 
deed only  by  the  growth  of  popular  intelligence  and 
initiative.  Recognizing  this,  the  fact  remains  that  the 
perfecting  of  the  cabinet  system  of  responsible  govern- 
ment made  the  House  of  Commons  the  ruling  power  in 
England. 

So  that  when  Franklin  spoke  of  the  English  loving 
the  spirit  of  liberty  and  hating  arbitrary  power  he  was 
thinking  of  a  tradition  and  a  fact  whose  origin  could 
be  seen  a  thousand  years  in  the  past,  which  had  been 
steadily  developed  until  personal  liberty  and  a  large 
measure  of  self-government  had  been  attained  and  the 
arbitrary  power  of  the  king  buried  beyond  any  hope 
of  resu»-rection.    But  Parliament  was  not  yet  the  voice 


BRITISH    LIBERTY   AND  THE  EMPIRE 


147 


of  the  nation.  The  English  people  had  yet  to  make 
their  national  body  truly  rei :  esentative.  And  closely 
associated  with  this  next  step  forward  was  the  need  not 
only  for  radical  institutional  reforms  but  for  a  more 
thorough  spiritual  and  practical  adjustment  of  the  peo- 
ple to  their  growing  responsibilities,  a  progressive  es- 
cape from  narrow  insularity,  a  more  perfect  reflection 
in  the  government  of  the  steadily  developing  national 
idealism  and  national  conscience. 

For  the  government  of  England  in  the  eighteenth 
century  was  government  by  a  small  group ;  it  was  not 
truly  national  in  any  organic  sense ;  it  might  be  directed 
well  or  ill,  with  regard  to  national  aims  and  ideals  or 
with  regard  to  the  interests  of  a  class  or  an  individual; 
it  might  be  guided  by  a  Chatham  or  a  Newcastle,  might 
bring  the  country  great  glory  or  profound  humiliation 
according  to  the  accident  of  *]^^  ruling  personality  in 
the  administration.  That  is  to  say,  it  had  the  merits 
and  the  defects  of  an  oligarchy.  And  if  it  is  true  that 
the  basis  of  the  government  had  to  be  widened  it  is  also 
true  that  the  nation  itself  had  much  to  learn  before  it 
could  wisely  undertake  the  responsibility  of  selecting 
and  judging  its  rulers.  The  problem  of  the  future  was 
then  threefold  —  the  nationalizing  of  Parliament,  the 
reform  of  the  entire  machinery  of  government  to  adapt 
its  working  to  changing  national  standards,  and  the  po- 
litical education  of  the  nation  as  a  whole. 


148 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


V       1 


The  first  of  these  was  solved  by  a  series  of  reform- 
ing measures  that  began  with  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832 
and  closed  with  the  franchise  act  of  March,  1918.  So 
far  as  human  devices  can  accomplish  it  the  government 
of  England  is  now  the  expression  of  the  English  people. 
The  whole  matter  was  carried  through  with  character- 
istic caution  and  with  characteristic  refusal  to  base  the 
extension  of  the  suffrage  on  any  general  principle  of 
universal  right.  There  was  no  recognition  of  any  ab- 
stract and  inborn  right  to  vote,  and  if  any  reformer  had 
proposed  such  a  recognition  in  1832  or  in  the  debates 
on  Disraeli's  Reform  Bill  of  iS67  or  Gladstone's  Bill 
of  1884  it  would  have  been  unanimously  voted  down. 
Each  step  forward  was  taken  on  its  own  merits,  the 
vote  being  granted  on  the  basis  of  ability  to  use  it  with 
intelligence  and  responsibility.  And  the  very  slowness 
of  the  advance,  with  its  discussions  and  agitations, 
aided  in  the  matter  of  national  education  in  govern- 
ment. The  result  is  that  notwithstanding  its  mo- 
narchical form  and  its  House  of  Lords  England  is  to 
all  intents  and  purposes  a  democracy. 

Of  the  whole  complex  process  of  administrative  re- 
form and  the  growth  of  political  intelligence  we  need 
notice  only  the  general  trend.  The  essential  thing  to 
remember  is  that  British  liberty  and  British  conception 
of  social  order,  like  the  Empire,  have  been  unplanned, 
unsystematic,  unsymmetrical  in  tlicir  growth,  not  pro- 


BRITISH    LIBERTY   AND    THE    EMPIRE 


149 


ceeding  on  logical  or  consistent  principles  but  moving 
sometimes  rapidly  and  sometimes  slowly,  removing  one 
abuse  and  leaving  another  untouched  for  a  generation, 
the  light  coming  not  like  the  dawn,  diffused  and  uni- 
versal, but  in  brilliant  rays  that  illumine  a  narrow  circle 
and  leave  vast  areas  in  darkness.  We  grow  in  the 
same  way  a-:  individuals,  developing  wonderful  skill  in 
some  things,  remaining  clumsy  and  inept  in  others, 
growing  in  \visdom  and  in  stupidity,  in  virtue  and  in 
weakness,  threading  our  way  through  a  wilderness  with 
patience  and  courage,  to  stumble  and  lose  ourselves  on 
the  well-lit  highway.  But  progress  has  not  been  v/holly 
haphazard  and  blur  ': ring;  with  the  erratic  gleams 
there  has  been  the  slow  advance  of  a  real  daybreak; 
and  there  has  been  an  increasing  willingness  to  throw 
down  barriers,  to  let  freedom  of  speech,  freedom  of 
thought,  the  mighty  educative  forces  of  the  press  and 
of  unhampered  intercourse  aid  in  the  oncoming  and 
penetration  of  the  light.  There  has  been  even  an  effort 
to  remove  economic  burdens,  to  recognize  the  need  for 
mutual  help,  a  r-.  illation  that  education  and  reform 
proceed  as  much  'n  t  e  dissolving  of  prejudices,  by  the 
following  of  genei;.as  impulses,  by  resolute  courage  in 
magnanimity  as  by  the  acquiring  of  knowledge  or  by 
external  changes. 

We  do  not  use  the  word  education  in  the  technical 
anc    nstitutional  sense.     Public  education  through  the 


ISO 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


t     >^. 


h     I 


schools  has  indeed  been  systematized  and  democratized 
only  in  our  own  time  by  the  Education  Bill  of  1918  — 
one  of  the  cases  in  which  an  obvious  and  inevitable  re- 
form was  postponed  by  class,  academic,  and  ecclesiasti- 
cal opposition.  But  the  admirable  measure  that  has 
been  at  last  enacted  is  the  formal  and  institutional 
result  of  a  widening  of  horizon,  a  growth  of  intellectual 
and  spiritual  life  that  altered  tie  outlook  and  deepened 
the  humanity  of  the  English  people  long  before  it  found 
expression  and  satisfaction  in  law  and  machinery.  Its 
pioneers  were  men  like  Carlyle,  Ruskin,  Morris,  the 
Arnolds,  and  Kingsley,  and  the  result  may  be  seen  in 
the  whole  tone  of  novels  and  periodicals  from  Dickens 
to  Galsworthy,  in  the  immense  vitality  of  the  Labor 
Unions,  in  the  iconoclastic  writings  of  H.  G.  Wells, 
George  Bernard  Shaw  and  G.  K.  Chesterton,  in  the 
"  socialistic  "  legislation  of  Lloyd-George,  One  is  not 
bound  to  approve  every  manifestation  of  the  new  life. 
But  it  is  of  profound  importance  to  recognize  that  the 
wide  reaching  forces  of  an  education  infinitely  more 
potent  than  any  activities  of  the  class-room  have 
brought  forth  activities,  purposes,  eager  and  insistent 
quests  that  are  already  reconstructing  the  whole  fabric 
of  English  thought  and  conduct.  Liberty  is  no  longer 
a  matter  of  votes  and  institutional  reforms.  The 
negative  and  destructive  phase,  absolutely  necessary 
and  fruitful  as  it  was,  has  given  way  progressively  to  a 


BRITISH    LIBERTY   AND   THE  EMPIRE 


151 


phase  that  is  constructive  and  positive,  and  the  English 
people  are  setting  forth  on  voyages  of  discovery  as 
adventurous  and  as  momentous  as  those  of  Frobisher 
and  Drake. 

One  element  in  this  movement  of  national  education 
for  democracy  is  the  Empire.  It  is  not  without  reason 
that  observers  have  said  that  British  history  in  the  last 
hundred  years  has  been  centered  chiefly  in  tvvc  things 
—  democracy  and  expansion,  each  unceasingly  react- 
ing on  the  other.  And  impossible  as  it  is  to  discuss 
in  any  detail  the  infinitely  difficult  and  complicated 
problems  of  the  British  Empire  it  is  by  no  means  im- 
possible to  indicate  the  most  essential  facts  that  have 
bearing  on  broad  principles  of  policy. 

The  nucleus  of  the  Empire  is  England.  But  the 
moment  we  widen  our  field  of  study  to  consider  the 
Empire  we  find  that  we  have  to  correct  our  terminol- 
ogy. To  use  the  words  England  and  Britain  as  if 
they  were  synonymous  is  not  strictly  accurate  when 
we  are  referring  to  the  last  two  hundred  years.  For 
England  is  only  the  most  powerful  and  populous  mem- 
ber of  a  partnership  in  which  her  three  associates  — 
Wales,  Scotland  and  Ireland  —  are  far  from  being 
dormant  or  submerged.^    We  say  partnership,  not 

iln  round  numbers  England  has  a  population  of  about 
35,000,000,  Wales  of  about  2,000,000,  Scotland  of  4,700,000  and 
Ireland  of  4,400,00a 


IS2 


RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


':< 


W        ) 


federation,  for  the  four  peoples  are  combined  in  a  leg- 
islative and  administrative  union.  None  of  the  four 
have  separate  autonomy.  All  send  representatives  on 
equal  terms  to  the  Parliament  at  Westminster,  and  all 
are  subject  to  a  common  administration  responsible  to 
that  Parliament.  If  each  of  the  four  voted  en  bloc 
on  the  basis  of  representation  in  proportion  to  popu- 
lation, England  would  naturally  have  an  overwhelming 
preponderance  over  the  other  three.  But  this  is  never 
done.  The  Parliamentary  divisions  are  based  not  on 
national  affiliations  but  on  party  groupings,  and  if 
either  Scotch  or  Irish  representatives  choose  to  vote 
as  such  they  could  frequently  hold  the  balance  of 
power. 

Of  the  four  nations  thus  united  Ireland  is  over- 
represented,  with  103  members  to  Scotland's  72.  But 
Ireland  is  the  one  discontented  member  of  the  Union, 
and  Ireland  presents  accordingly  the  nearest  and  most 
pressing  of  imperial  problems ;  she  is  the  one  member 
of  the  Empire  in  which  there  is  an  active  and  powerful 
movement  for  secession.  The  Irish  question  is  of 
course  not  a  new  one;  it  has  been  one  of  the  most 
baffling  and  anxious  problems  that  England  has  had  to 
face  since  she  first  began  to  take  her  empire  seriously, 
and  bit  by  bit  she  has  believed  that  she  was  in  a  fair 
way  to  solve  it.  But  in  the  last  few  years  it  has  en- 
tered on  a  new  and  acute  phase.     In  any  attempt  at 


BRITISH    LIBERTY   AND   THE   EMPIRE 


153 


imperial  reconstruction  Ireland's  three  partners  —  not 
England  alone  —  will  have  to  try  once  more  to  cross 
the  abyss  that  separates  the  Irish  attitude  to  life  from 
the  English  or  the  Scottish  and  attempt  to  devise  some 
workable  basis  on  which  the  two  islands  may  be  peace- 
ful and  friendly  neighbors.  Here  again  it  is  not  our 
province  to  make  even  a  suggestion  toward  a  solution 
of  the  puzzle.  We  can  only  state  the  facts  that  give 
us  a  starting  point.  And  as  a  beginning  we  ask  to 
be  granted  two  postulates  —  one  that  England's  rec- 
ord in  Ireland  up  to  the  first  quarter  of  the  nineteenth 
century  was  consistently  one  of  tyranny  and  misrule, 
and  a  second,  that  in  recent  years  she  has  shown  will- 
ingness to  go  to  any  length  in  the  healing  of  the  old 
wounds.  Democratic  England,  in  other  words,  has 
been  endeavoring  to  cancel  the  misdeeds  of  oligarchic 
England. 

The  desires  of  Ireland  a  century  ago  were  three- 
fold —  the  removal  of  religious  disabilities,  the  just 
settlement  of  a  peculiarly  oppressive  system  of  land 
tenure,  and  autonomy  or  Home  Rule.  The  first  was 
granted  by  the  Catholic  Emancipation  Act  of  1829 
and  the  disestablishment  of  the  Protestant  Church  of 
Ireland  in  1869.  The  second  was  dealt  with  in  a 
series  of  Land  Purchase  Acts  culminating  in  Wynd- 
ham's  Act  of  1903,  by  which  the  Irish  tenants  were 
aided  in  the  purchase  of  their  lands  by  payments  no 


154 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL    LIFE 


id. 


I    !    • 

I' 


P       ) 


more  burdensome  than  the  old  rent.  Two-thirds  of 
the  Irish  agriculturists  now  own  their  own  land,  and 
the  Irish  Land  Question  which  provoked  so  much 
heartburning  and  bitterness  two  generations  ago  exists 
no  longer.  Home  Rule  was  a  more  difficult  matter. 
Gladstone's  two  Home  Rule  Bills  of  1886  and  1893 
wrecked  his  own  power  and  split  the  Liberal  Party. 
But  at  last  the  Bill  introduced  by  Mr.  Asquith  in  19 12 
and  passed  in  19 14  gave  England's  consent  to  Home 
Rule  on  the  understanding  that  it  was  not  to  come  into 
effect  until  after  the  war. 

This  condition  was  agreed  upon  because  every  one 
knew  that  the  enactment  of  Home  Rule  by  the  British 
Parliament  was  far  from  settling  the  question.  Six 
of  the  nine  counties  of  Ulster  were  bitterly  opposed  to 
the  idea  of  an  Irish  Parliament  at  Dublin  —  an- 
nounced indeed  that  they  would  oppose  it,  so  far  as 
application  to  Ulster  was  concerned,  by  armed  resist- 
ance. It  was  thought  possible  that  some  kind  of  fed- 
erative scheme  might  be  arranged,  but  the  intensity  of 
Irish  sectional  feeling  promised  so  fierce  a  dispute 
over  details  that  it  seemed  urwise  to  attempt  a  settle- 
ment during  the  war.  Then  long  before  the  war 
closed  arose  a  new  dragon  in  the  path  —  Sinn  Fein. 
When  November,  19 18,  brought  peace,  and  when  the 
triumphant  but  wearied  Britons  began  to  consider  the 
fulfillment  of  the  promise  of  19 14  they  found  that  the 


BRITISH   LIBERTY  AND  THE  EMPIRE 


155 


whole  problem  had  changed  its  aspect.  Ulster  still 
stood  on  the  platform  of  1912-14.  But  the  majority 
of  the  people  who  had  agitated  and  suffered  so  long 
for  Home  Rule  and  had  at  last  won  England's  sup- 
port, now  cast  their  old  banners  aside  and  demanded 
independence. 

Part  of  the  situation  is  clear;  part  of  it  is  distress- 
ingly obscure.     Only  by  an  extravagant  and  mislead- 
ing figure  of  speech  can  Ireland  be  pictured  as  in 
chains.     She  is  in  chains  only  as  South  Carolina  and 
Virginia  were  in  chains  in  i860  —  not  so  much  so 
indeed,  for  the  South  did  fear  from  the  Union  an  act 
that  was  regarded  as  unjust,  the  expropriation  of 
property  and  the  annihilation  of  a  valued  institution. 
Ireland  is  in  no  danger  of  anything  of  the  kind.     Her 
champions  do  indeed  speak  of  oppression  and  slavery, 
but  the  words  have  only  a  symbolical  meaning:  the 
oppression  lies  solely  in  the  insistence  on  the  main- 
tenance of  Union.     But  even  if  the  principle  of  self- 
determination  and  the  rights  of  small  nationalities 
were  to  lead  England  to  grant  Ireland  her  independ- 
ence—  notwithstanding    a    danger    to    her    national 
safety  far  graver  than  the  danger  of  the  Napoleon- 
Maximilian  combination  in  Mexico  or  the  danger  of 
an  independent  southern  Confederacy  ever  were  to 
the  United  States  —  there  still  remains  Ulster.     Ul- 
ster as  part  of  an  Irish  republic  would  be  an  Irish 


l^      i 


h     ' 


! 


156  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

Alsace-Lorraine,  an  Irish  Poland,  forced  to  become 
part  of  a  state  with  which  it  has  little  in  common  ex- 
cept location  on  the  same  island.  England  might  con- 
ceivably grant  independence  to  Ireland.  She  could 
not  possibly  look  on  at  the  coercion  of  Ulster. 

December  27,  19 18,  saw  Ireland  swept  by  Sinn 
Fein.*  Seventy-two  members  were  elected  to  repre- 
sent Irish  constituencies  in  the  British  Parliament  on 
the  understanding  that  they  would  not  go  to  Westmin- 
ster but  would  instead  meet  as  the  first  Parliament  of 
the  Irish  Republic.  The  astonished  world  has  seen 
this  carried  out,  has  read  the  Irish  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence, has  heard  how  the  proceedings  were  car- 
ried on  not  in  English  but  in  the  language  of  the  older 
Ireland.  An  Irish  Parliament  at  Dublin  demanding 
the  withdrawal  of  the  "British  garrison";  Ulster 
grimly  watching,  rifles  in  hand;  England  waiting, 
wrathful  and  exasperated,  sick  of  war.  loathing  the 
idea  of  coercion,  uncertain  whether  the  proceedings  of 
January,  1919,  were  a  pageant  or  a  tragedy;  the  world 
at  large  apparently  disinclined  to  take  the  whole  busi- 
ness seriously  and  less  interested  in  the  erratic  doings 
of  the  Irish  than  in  the  growing  strength  of  the  Labor 
Party  —  such  is  the  situation  now.     The  conflict  is 

lAn  interesting  at-!  cympathetic  acco-i-t  of  Sinn  Fein  and  the 
movement  of  vhich  it  is  an  outcome  will  be  foimd  in  Morris, 
The  Celtic  Dawn  (Macmillan,  New  York,  1917). 


■^. 


BRITISH    LIBERTY   AND  THE  EMPIRE 


157 


no  doubt  largely  one  of  religion;  it  is  at  least  partly 
economic ;  but  it  is  nine-tenths  based  on  memory  and 
sentiment,  and  against  these  intangible  but  tremen- 
dous forces  argument  and  persuasion  are  of  little 
avail. 

But  Ireland  is  after  all  a  sing^ular  and  exceptional 
case;  the  future  of  the  Empire  will  depend  primarily 
on  tiie  wisdom  or  unwisdom  shown  in  relation  to  the 
overseas  dominions.  And  here  we  must  again  put 
forward  a  postulate,  though  in  truth  it  is  a  simple 
historical  fact  rather  than  a  postulate.  It  is  this,  that 
the  British  Empire  was  in  no  sense  the  result  of  a 
clearly  understood  imperial  policy.  It  was  not 
planned  by  statesmen  and  was  neither  acquired  nor 
at  any  time  governed  according  to  a  consistent  theory 
or  method.  Canada  was  conquered  as  a  result  of  an 
apparently  irreconcilable  conflict  between  two  rivals 
in  North  America,  one  feudal  in  form  absolutist  and 
militarist  in  spirit,  the  other  free,  highly  individual- 
istic, restless  and  intolerant  of  restraint.  It  was  a 
rivalry  of  two  peoples,  not  of  kings  or  governments, 
and  the  victors  were  not  thinking  so  much  of  empire 
as  of  the  right  to  live  and  grow  in  their  own  way. 
Australia  was  discovered  almost  by  accident,  colonized 
as  a  penal  settlement,  and  raised  to  its  present  status 
as  a  Commonwealth  by  colonists  who  went  to  the 
south  Pacific  of  their  own  will,  seeking  a  home  and  a 


)     , 


158 


Ri: CONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFL 


l\       ) 


larger  opportunit'  than  was  open  to  them  in  the  British 
islands.  India  was  conquered  by  the  Kast  India  Com- 
pany, noi  by  England,  slowly,  reluctantly,  against  spe- 
cific orders  from  the  Directors  at  home,  as  a  police 
measure ;  and  the  Indian  princes  who  were  conquered 
were  themselves  foreign  invaders  ruling  a  subject  peo- 
ple by  the  power  of  the  sword.  Princes  and  traders 
represented  principles  of  ethics  and  life  that  could  not 
possibly  exist  side  by  side.  The  conquest  of  India 
was  not  foreseen  and  not  designed ;  it  was  simply  one 
of  the  irrepressible  conflicts  of  history.  And  these 
illustrations  are  quite  typical.  The  Lmpire  grew;  it 
was  not  constructed.  Or  if  it  was  in  a  sense  con- 
structed the  builders  were  traders,  missionaries,  ad- 
venturers, home  seekers,  not  —  for  the  most  part  — 
statesmen  or  soldiers.  An  imperialist  policy  arose 
only  after  the  Empire  was  already  a  fact.* 

But  this  spontaneous,  unplanned  growth  of  the  Brit- 
ish Empire  led  to  a  singular  failure  to  develop  any 
consistent  policy  of  control.  The  measures  adopted 
to  meet  a  situation  in  one  part  of  the  world  might 
be  exactly  opposite  in  principle  to  a  measure  applied 
somewhere  else.  No  British  statesman,  except  per- 
haps Chatham,  ever  seriously  viewed  the  Empire  as 
a  whole  or  systematically  considered  either  further 

1  See  Lavell  and  Payne,  Imperial  England  (Macmillan,  New 
York,  1918). 


BRITISH    LIBERTY    AND   THE   EMPIRE 


159 


conquests  or  the  organization  of  dominions  already 
conquered.  Each  problem  was  met  as  it  arose  by  the 
men  on  the  spot,  sanctioned  or  canceled  after  the  fact 
by  the  administration  at  home,  ..ever  faced  as  part 
of  a  whole.  If  we  may  be  permitted  a  paradox,  it 
came  to  be  almost  a  policy  to  have  no  policy,  but  to 
adopt  without  formulation  an  ideal,  the  ideal  of  Brit- 
ish liberty,  the  practii-il  freedom  that  respects  tht  free- 
dom of  others.  So  that  the  Empire,  conquered  w  ithout 
plan,  remained  heterogeneous  in  character  and  govern- 
ment. And  therein  lay  its  salvation.  The  myriad 
peoples  under  the  British  flng  were  never  squeezed  mto 
a  British  mold,  nc  ver  made  to  conforn  <.<i^  ^"iir.su 
pattern,  except  in  one  regard,  they  m«  ■.'  i  )1  or 
otherwise  interfere  with  others,  and  t' .  v  Jiuv^t  be 
reasonably  honest.  They  could  agitate,  complain, 
criticize,  say  or  print  all  kinds  of  sedition,  but  they 
must  keep  the  law. 

The  result  was  a  startling  one.  Instead  on  u  co- 
herent and  efficient  imperial  administration  there  was 
born  in  the  British  dominions  a  real  spirit  of  imperial 
nationality.  Every  colonist,  every  subject  who  really' 
thought  at  all,  began  in  the  second  half  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  to  realize  that  he  was  part  of  a  living 
thing,  of  a  nation  unorganized  and  formless  but  a 
nation  nevertheless.  Some  of  the  colonies  had  been 
granted  self-government,  were  practically  independent, 


;  ] 


I  ) 


I 

) 


\        I 


•,'i 


: 


1 60         RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

retaining  the  British  flag  and  the  British  name  with 
willing  affection  and  pride  but  with  no  sense  of  sub- 
jection. They  kept  the  phrase  "British  subject" 
from  old  habit ;  but  no  king  or  statesman  of  the  mother 
country  dreamed  of  making  the  Canadian  or  the  Aus- 
tralian a  subject  in  actual  fact.  The  peoples  of  India, 
on  the  other  hand,  were  really  subject  to  the  British 
ParHament.  But  this  status  came  to  be  regarded  as 
a  temporary  concession  to  difficult  and  complicated 
facts,  not  as  anything  permanent  or  inevitable.  Every 
effort  indeed  was  put  forth  to  educate  Bengalese  and 
Rajputs,  Sikhs  and  Mohammedans  in  habits  of  politi- 
cal thinking,  political  self-restraint,  and  political  initia- 
tive. There  might  be  disagreement  as  to  immediate 
concessions  and  as  to  this  or  that  procedure;  Hindus 
and  English  might  not  see  eye  to  eye  as  to  the  grant- 
ing of  autonomy  this  year  or  next ;  but  the  whole  pol- 
icy of  Britain's  rule  in  India  loses  sense  and  coherence 
if  that  rule  is  to  be  regarded  as  a  fixed  and  absolute 
thing. 

One;  more  comes  in  the  English  refusal  to  pay 
much  attention  to  rigid  general  principles,  even  those 
of  democracy  and  self-determination.  The  Briton 
knows  thct  government  is  a  difficult  matter  and  a  very 
practical  one.  He  gained  his  own  liberty  in  a  thou- 
sand years  of  training;  he  values  it  and  is  willing  to 
help  others  to  attain  it;  but  if  he  sees  disaster  as  a 


BRITISH   LIBERTY  AND  THE  EMPIRE 


l6l 


likely  result  of  freedom  he  makes  up  his  mind  that 
whether  he  can  work  out  a  logical  justification  or  not 
freedom  must  temporarily  give  way  to  safety.  It 
is  not  a  question  of  sacrifice  of  principles.  It  is  a 
question  of  good  sense.  If  we  were  to  sum  up 
England's  attitude  to  even  the  noblest  and  truest  gen- 
eralizations about  things  human  and  social  it  would 
be  something  like  this :  that  human  nature  is  too  com- 
plex and  variable  to  be  reduced  to  a  formula  or  an 
exact  science,  that  the  statesman  like  the  sailor  has 
frequently  to  pursue  a  devious  course  to  avoid  shoals, 
and  that  to  shipwreck  the  state  by  heading  rigidly  and 
consistently  toward  your  goal  is  poor  seamanship. 
Treason  to  an  ideal  does  not  lie  in  a  temporary  change 
of  course  but  in  a  change  that  is  permanent  and  con- 
scious. And  it  is  the  Empire's  confidence  in  Britain's 
fundamental  loyalty  to  freedom  and  fair  play  that 
must  account  for  the  astonishing  solidarity  of  19 14-8. 
Take  India,  for  example.  Here  is  a  land  of  1,800,- 
000  square  miles  and  300,000,000  people,  varying  in 
intellectual  and  spiritual  power  from  Rabindranath 
Tagore  to  Gonds  and  Pathans  on  the  cultural  level  of 
the  Zulu.  In  her  varieties  of  race,  of  religion,  of  tra- 
dition India  is  not  a  nation  but  a  continent  whose  peo- 
ples are  less  a  imit  than  the  peoples  of  Europe.  Ben- 
galees, Sikhs,  Mohammedans  and  Bhils  are  infinitely 
less  alike  than  Serbs,  Portuguese,  Bavarians  and  Gas- 


I 


■;  \ 


162 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND  NATIONAL   LIFE 


cons.     Until   the   British   conquest   they  had   never 
known  the  smallest  degree  of  political  freedom  or  more 
th-'n  an  external  and  deceptive  unity.    To  have  kept 
them  disunited  and  permanently  subject  by  the  meth- 
ods of  Moguls  and  Sultans  would  have  been  a  simple 
matter.     But  instead  of  doing  this  or  even  attempting 
it  the  English  have  founded  schools  and  universities, 
have  encouraged  the  establishment  of  a  vernacular 
press,  have  given  the  cities  self-government,  have  ad- 
mitted natives  to  high  places  in  the  civil  and  military 
service,  have  organized   representative  Councils   for 
the  separate  provinces  and  for  the  Empire,  have  in 
every  way  sought  to  awaken  that  which  the  despot 
does  all  in  his  power  to  suppress  —  the  intelligence 
and   initiative   of   the   people.     Mistakes  have   been 
made.     Tyrannical  and  repressive  acts  have  been  com- 
mitted by  ignorant  or  narrow-minded  Parliaments  and 
officials.     But  these  do  not  in  the  least  obscure  the 
essential  fact  that  England  has  been  fundamentally  true 
to  the  ideals  and  principles  clarified  and  worked  out  in 
the  home  ishnd  from  the  days  of  Northumbria  and 
Wessex  to  the  days  of  Gladstone  and  Lloyd-George. 
And  the  result  has  been  the  growth  of  what  is  ex- 
ternally  the   strangest   kind   of   patriotism   that   the 
world  has  ever  seen,  not  based  on  community  of  race 
or  language  or  culture  but  on  community  of  sentiment 
and  aim. 


BRITISH    LIB1:RTY   AND   THE   EMPIRE 


163 


The  problems  of  reconstruction  so  far  as  liberty  and 
the  Empire  are  concerned  do  not  involve,  then,  any 
important  change  of  goal  or  of  general  method.  They 
are  largely  a  matter  of  external  form,  the  removal  of 
inconsistencies,^  the  improvement  of  legal  and  admin- 
istrative machinery,  the  devising  of  some  method  by 
which  the  overseas  dominions  may  be  given  a  voice  in 
imperial  concerns.  The  time  is  even  in  sight  when 
Britain  will  have  to  consider  the  matter  of  social  and 
economic  reconstruction  from  the  point  of  view  laid 
down  in  the  platform  of  the  Labor  Party :  "  to  insure 
the  most  equitable  distribution  of  the  nation's  wealth 
that  may  be  possible,  on  the  basis  of  the  common  own- 
ership of  land  and  capital  and  the  democratic  control 
of  all  the  activities  of  society."  But  whatever  may  be 
the  outcome,  and  however  the  immediate  problems 
may  be  settled  the  basis  of  reconstruction  is  clear.  It 
lies  not  in  a  formula,  a  law  or  an  institution  but  in  a 
record.  British  liberty  may  take  new  foims,  as  it  has 
in  the  past,  but  it  cannot  be  destroyed,  for  it  is  inter- 
woven in  the  very  fiber  of  the  British  people.  It  may 
be  inconsistent  in  its  application  and  may  wander  from 
the  path,  for  it  is  not  an  absolute  or  invariable  thing, 

1  It  need  hardly  be  pointed  out  that  these  are  innumerable. 
Many  of  them  are  comparatively  miimportant,  but  some  —  such 
as  what  is  left  of  the  old  secret  and  not  too  scrupulous  diplomacy 
—  must  naturally  hamper  the  free  expression  of  national  life  in 
its  government 


'    ) 


ii  i 


I    . 


164  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

but  it  cannot  wander  far  or  forever.  And  the  Em- 
pire, whatever  outward  forms  it  may  take,  is  irrevo- 
cably a  living  federation  of  free  peoples.  Reconstruc- 
tion may  give  liberty  and  the  Empire  more  coherent 
and  adequate  form.  But  that  form  must  not  too 
tightly  enclose  the  life  that  it  expresses  or  it  will  fol- 
low divine  right  and  the  Whig  oligarchy  into  the  scrap 
heap  of  discarded  machinery. 


-\  V 


)   . 


IX 


The  New  Idealism  in  England 

To  the  average  American  England  is  the  conserva- 
tive, stubborn  John  Bull,  admirable  in  a  certain  inflex- 
ible doggedness,  not  so  admirable  in  the  matters  of 
stiffness,  unyielding  prejudices,  insularity  and  arro- 
gance.    Even  those  who  know  the  poetry  of  Shelley 
and  Keats,  or  the  paintings  of  Turner  and  Burne- 
Jones  frequently  and  peniaps  unconsciously  take  as 
their  normal  type  of  Englishman  the  well-fed  person 
of  florid  countenance,  bull-dog  jaw  and  truculent  ex- 
pression with  whom  the  cartoonists  of  many  gener- 
ations have  made  us  familiar.     Associated  with  this 
individual  in  the  American  mind  there  is  an  unpleas- 
ant memory  of  George  III  and  Lord  North,  and  of 
hostile  gestures  during  the  Civil  War.     And  the  whole 
combination  has  kept  alive  in  many  minds  a  feeling 
that  has  ceased,  indeed,  to  be  unfriendly  but  is  hardly 
one  of  active  affection.     Since  the  early  years  of  the 
war  a  warmer  feeling  has  been  noticeable,  inspired 
both  by  admiration  and  by  recognition  that  England's 
traditional  tenacity  was  in  this  case  at  least  a  real  bul- 

165 


'\  \ 


i66 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


,V^ 


^i  ' 


|!  •! 


wark  of  civilization.  But  the  change,  one  fears,  while 
welcome  and  of  incalculable  value  for  the  luture,  is 
rather  emotional  than  rational,  and  curiously  enough 
England  is  still  to  Americans  at  once  the  best  known 
and  the  least  understood  of  all  the  states  of  Europe. 
The  English  people  are  still  unuer  the  shadow  of  the 
John  Bull  cartoons  and  the  memory  of  unhappy  epi- 
sodes of  the  past. 

The  quality  of  tenacity,  the  "  courage  never  to  sub- 
mit or  yield,"  the  quality  that  has  made  the  bull-dog 
a  much  more  appropriate  symbol  of  the  English  race 
than  the  lion,  is  indeed  recognizable  as  English,  and 
tenacity  in  its  less  attractive  aspects  does  no  doubt 
tend  to  become  obstinacy.  But  the  typical  English- 
man, tenacious  and  even  obstinate  as  he  may  be,  is  cer- 
tainly not  a  John  Bull.  John  Bull  was,  in  fact,  the 
Tory  squire  of  a  hundred  years  ago,  a  picturesque 
and  compelling  figure,  indeed,  of  no  small  power  in 
past  politics,  but  in  no  sense  representative  of  all  Eng- 
lishmen. If,  however,  instead  of  limiting  ojir  view  to 
one  class,  we  try  to  see  whether  we  can  venture  on  any 
general  proposition  regarding  the  English  people,  we 
might  perhaps  dare  to  say  this  —  that  the  "Lnglish  are 
singularly  practical  in  both  a  good  and  a  bad  sense, 
excelling  in  the  cool,  sensible  and  fearless  meeting  of 
problems  as  they  come,  but  not  largely  gifted  with 
foresight  and  imagination,  content  to  face  an  immedi- 


THE   NEW    IDEALISM   IN   ENGLAND 


167 


ate  difficulty  and  to  solve  it  with  great  patience  and 
thoroughness,  but  little  inclined  to  theorize,  to  look 
beyond  a  concrete  situation  to  principles  and  ideals. 
This  practical  tendency  — in  which  Americans  are, 
after  all,  very  like  their  kinsmen  overseas  —  has  its 
unfortunate  side,  and  has  often  degenerated  into  ma- 
terialism.    It  is  in  this  regard  that  the  Saxon  is  often 
contrasted  with  the  Celt,  and  the  Welsh,  Scottish  and 
Irish  elements  pointed  to  as  redeeming  strains  in  the 
British  stock.     Yet  even  of  the  English  themselves 
our  statement  can  be  made  only  with  reservations.     It 
may  be  questioned  whether  the  hard-headed,  somewhat 
cold-hearted,  brutally  practical  Englishman  was  ever  a 
universal  type;  there  were  always  Chaucers,  Shake- 
speres,  Miltons,  Lambs  and  Cowpers;  and  time  and 
again  the  English  imperviousnes  to  ideas  and  ideals 
has  been  broken  by  the  surging  of  noble  enthusiasms 
and  of  imaginative  power.     All  we  cat)  admit  is  a 
tendency,  a  tendency  sometimes  strongly  marked  and 
sometimes  hardly  visible  —  a  tendency  to  which  Mat- 
thew Arnold  gave  the  name  of  Philistinism,  the  oppo- 
site of  idealism.     This  much  is  probably  true,  that 
Philistinism  has  been  in  the  past  —  in  spite  of  brilliant 
exceptions  —  the  outstanding  national  fault  of  Eng- 
land, a  sort  of  spiritual  bondage  to  the  practical. 

Now  it  is  precisely  this  Iwndage  that  has  been  grad- 
ually broken  during  the  last  century  and  a  half.     Eng- 


i  \ 


i68 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


)     . 


I        < 


land  has  passed  through  a  spiritual  revolution.  It  is 
true  that  in  most  of  the  essentials  of  character  and 
attitude  to  life  the  English  of  the  present  are  still  the 
English  of  Cromwell's  day  or  of  Shakespere's.  The 
love  of  action  and  the  virtues  of  action  that  made 
England's  greatest  poet  a  dramatist,  the  shrewd  cau- 
tion that  requires  progress  to  go  by  one  step  at  a 
time  —  with  tangible  evidence  that  the  new  foothold 
is  solid  —  the  patience  in  untying  troublesome  knots 
and  the  common-sense  in  cutting  knots  that  refuse  to 
be  untied,  the  dislike  of  extremes  and  the  love  of 
compromise,  all  of  these  characteristics  run  through 
century  after  century  of  English  history.  They  are 
still  present,  and  they  show  no  signs  of  disappearing. 
But  to  them  has  been  added  a  new  idealism  *  that  has 
widened  the  Englishman's  horizon  and  deepened  his 
insight.  The  old  complacent  arrogance,  the  old  insu- 
larity are  visibly  fading  away.  And  this  change  is 
perhaps  a  more  enthralling  and  significant  phase  of 
modern  English  history  than  even  the  creation  of  the 
empire  or  the  achievement  of  democracy,  closely  asso- 
ciated as  these  all  are.  It  has  been  wonderfully  evi- 
dent during  the  war,  and  it  must  l)e  given  full  weight 
in  our  estimate  of  England's  part  in  reconstruction. 

^  See  pp.  72-3.  By  idealism  in  relation  to  England  is  meant 
simply  willingness  and  power  to  look  beyond  the  concrete  pres- 
ent, to  see  in  life  spiritual  realities  as  well  as  material  things. 


THE   NEW    IDEALISM    IN    ENGLAND 


169 


Let  us  be  specific,  for  the  story  of  this  spiritual 
change  is  just  as  definite,  just  as  clearly  marked  in  its 
incidents,  as  the  story  of  a  war  or  of  a  political  revo- 
lution. Look  first  at  the  field  most  accessible  and  in 
some  ways  most  conclusive  —  the  field  of  literature. 
Every  student  of  English  poetry  knows  the  character- 
istics of,  say,  Dryden  and  Pope.  One  finds  in  them 
penetrating  knowledge  of  human  nature,  keen  good 
sense,  a  wonderful  gift  of  clear,  vivid,  striking,  often 
epigrammatic  expression,  and  a  sounding,  immedi- 
ately apprehended  rhythm  —  a  music  of  verse  as  easily 
caught  as  the  music  of  Sousa's  marches.  Their  de- 
fect is  in  depth  and  breadth  of  vision,  in  the  quality 
and  power  of  the  music.  They  are  hard,  external, 
unemotional,  lacking  in  prophetic  insight.  All  in  them 
except  their  music  could  be  expressed  in  prose,  and 
their  music  —  effective  as  it  often  is  —  rarely  lifts  our 
souls  much  above  the  prosaic,  practical  contemplation 
of  the  world  around  us. 

Now  turn  from,  say.  Pope's  Essay  on  Man  to  Shel- 
ley's Ode  to  a  Skylark  or  to  any  of  the  lyrics  of  Keats. 
Pope  and  Shelley  are  separated  in  time  by  only  a 
hundred  years.  Yet  they  belong  to  different  worlds. 
Shelley  is  not  concerned  at  all  with  the  concrete  world 
around  him.  He  resents  it  and  seeks  to  escape  from 
it.  Practical  common  sense  is  to  him  the  common 
sense  of  crawling  when  God  has  given  us  wings,  gaz- 


I   . 


170  RECONSTRUCTION   AND    NATIONAL    LIFE 


,p4 


it      ' 


ing  at  the  earth  beneath  when  the  glories  of  Heaven 
are  displayed  above  us,  shutting  ourselves  up  in  a  cell 
and  busying  ourselves  with  its  walls  and  bars  and  un- 
lovely furniture  when  outside  we  may  revel  in  divine- 
beauty  and  the  immeasurable  joy  of  spiritual  freedom. 
He  chafes  against  human  limitations.  Life  is  to  him 
not  a  practical  thing  but  a  sad  thing  because  it  is  so 
full  of  chains  and  blindness.  So  he  is  a  poet  not  of 
shrewd  common-sense  but  of  revolt,  of  escape,  of  infi- 
nite yearning  for  a  life  freed  from  the  sordid,  prosaic, 
every-day  concreteness  of  a  practical  but  weary  and 
unprofitable  world.  And  his  verse  has  a  magic  and 
power  in  its  music  that  Pope  never  dreamed  of;  to 
compare  Pope  and  Shelley  is  like  comparing  Strauss 
with  Beethoven. 

In  other  words  the  contrast  between  Pope  and  Shel- 
ley is  the  contrast  between  the  self-satisfied,  sensible 
man  of  the  world  and  the  man  who  has  discovered  that 
the  gates  of  Heaven  are  before  us,  ready  to  open  when 
we  have  the  courage  and  the  strength  to  utter  the 
"  Open  Sesame  "  that  will  reveal  to  us  the  dazzling 
light  and  beauty  of  eternal  truth.  In  a  famous  para- 
ble of  twenty-three  centuries  ago  Plato  compared  him- 
self and  his  fellows  to  men  living  in  a  cavern,  who 
knew  nothing  of  the  outer  world  except  through  shad- 
ows cast  on  the  wall,  who  had  never  seen  the  sun  and 
were  content  with  the  dim  light  of  their  cave.     Let 


THE   NEW    IDEALISM    IN    ENGLAND 


171 


one  of  them  be  taken  out  into  the  splendor  of  daylight 
—  he  will  be  dazzled  and  blinded,  anxious  to  flee  back 
into  the  comfortable  darkness.    To  these  cave-men 
common-sense  means  living  comfortably  in  their  twi- 
light, discussing  their  shadows,  talking  about  the  walls 
and  the  roof  and  one  another,  pouring  scorn  on  the 
dreamers  who  talk  of  possible  sunlight,  space  and 
beauty  outside.     Now  Pope  and  the  English  people  of 
his  time  were  sensible,  practical,  capable  men  of  the 
cavern :  Shelley  had  caught  a  glimpse  of  the  light  and 
glory  beyond  the  entrance.     He  did  not  quite  know 
how  to  escape  or  what  to  do  when  he  did  escape. 
But  he  was  quite  sure  that  the  life  of  the  cave  was  a 
contemptible  afifair,  and  that  to  leave  it  — even  by 
breaking  down  the  walls  —  was  the  first  duty  of  man. 
And  Shelley  was  not  the  only  prophet  of  the  new 
idealism  in  literature.    Long  before  his  time  one  may 
see  in  English  poetry  a  new  motive,  the  same  in  essence 
as  was  expressed  so  powerfully  by  the  whole  "  back  to 
nature  "  movement  in  France.     Among  both  peoples 
there  was  arising  a  feeling  that  life  had  become  too 
hard,  too  complex  and  artificial,  that  civilization  was 
becoming  a  curse  rather  than  a  blessing,  and  that  the 
cure  for  human  ills  was  in  a  return  to  nature,  to  the 
simple  life.     In  its  political  and  social  aspects  the  new 
idea  was  expressed  in  the  American  Declaration  of  In- 
dependence :  "  all  men  are  created  equal  and  are  en- 


MICROCOPY   RESOLUTION   TEST   CHART 

(ANSI  and  ISO  TEST  CHART  No    2) 


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^^S  Rochester.    New    York  14609        USA 

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172 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


V       1 


dewed  by  the  Creator  with  certain  inalienable  rights" ; 
and  on  this  side  the  movement  was  a  protest  against 
the  irrational  tyrannies  and  social  inequalities  of  the 
eighteenth  century.  Fifteen  years  before  the  Declara- 
tion of  Independence  it  had  found  powerful  expres- 
sion in  the  Social  Contract  and  the  Entile,  and  in  time 
to  come  it  was  to  sweep  over  Europe  in  the  war-cry 
of  liberty,  equality  and  fraternity.  But  in  England 
the  revolt  against  artificiality  and  the  praise  of  nature 
had  little  influence  on  politics.  It  did  indeed  touch 
economics,  and  Adam  Smith's  Wealth  of  Nations 
( 1776)  was  a  powerful  presentation  of  the  principle  of 
economic  freedom,  the  first  shot  in  the  campaign  that 
ultimately  led  England  to  abolish  commercial  and  in- 
dustrial restrictions  and  adopt  free  trade.  But  if  the 
new  faith  in  nature  did  not  find  expression  in  govern- 
ment it  did  influence  most  powerfully  the  thought  and 
feelings  of  the  people.  One  may  see  it  stirring  in 
Cowper's  Task  and  in  Thomson's  Seasons.  And 
finally  it  found  its  prophet  in  Wordsworth.  We  shall 
not  comment  on  Wordsworth's  religion  of  nature  be- 
cause it  can  be  understood  best  if  we  read  his  poetry. 
But  if  we  give  a  single  hour  to  the  Lines  written  above 
Tintern  Abbey  we  may  see  how  the  door  of  the  Eng- 
lish mind  was  being  opened  to  a  new  world  of  truth 
and  beauty.*     Shelley  was  a  poet  of  revolt  and  yearn- 

^The  student  who  wishes  to  know  more  of  Wordsworth  is 


I   > 


m 


THE   NEW    IDEALISM    IN   ENGLAND 


173 


ing;  but  Wordsworth  was  a  poet  of  discovery;  his 
Heaven  was  found  all  around  him,  God's  universe. 

This  note  of  rebellion  against  artificialism  and  of 
nature  worship  was  only  one  sign  of  the  change  that 
was  coming  over  England.  The  eighteenth  century 
saw  the  birth  of  English  painting.  And  it  began  in  a 
characteristic  way  with  the  brutal  realism  of  David 
Hogarth.  Before  Hogarth  there  were  no  English 
painters,  and  when  foreign  artists  came  to  England  — 
Holbein  and  Van  Dyck,  for  instance  —  the  only  works 
that  the  islanders  wanted  of  them  were  portraits. 
Portraits  one  could  understand;  they  were  intelligible 
and  altogether  worth  while.  But  all  of  the  really  great 
portraits  of  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  century  Eng- 
lishmen were  painted  by  foreigners,  and  in  no  other 
kind  of  art  was  there  any  appreciable  interest.  Ho- 
garth inaugurated  a  new  era.  His  naintings  and  en- 
gravings represented  ordinary  life,  usually  on  its  sor- 
did and  brutal  side,  and  they  were  done  with  a  marvel- 
ous power  and  vividness.  In  him  art  and  the  English 
mind  met  on  common  ground.  Religious  or  fanciful 
paintings  such  as  had  expressed  the  genius  of  Florence 
and  Venice  would  have  left  eighteenth  century  Eng- 
land cold  and  unresponsive.     But  these  pictures  of 

recommended  to  turn  not  to  his  complete  works  but  to  Matthew 
Arnold's  Selections  from  Wordsworth  (Macmillan,  Golden  Treas- 
ury Series)  prefaced  by  his  immortal  essay  on  the  poet 


I 


174 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NAT  o  "^AL   LIFE 


m.:j 


Li  ' 


London  streets,  these  presentations  of  ordinary  London 
life,  were  a  different  matter,  and  suddenly  the  English 
soul  awoke  to  the  wonder  and  the  power  of  painting. 
The  ice  was  broken,  and  before  the  end  of  the  century 
Reynolds,  Romney  and  Gainsborough  were  building  a 
noble  si  ^structure  on  the  foundation  laid  by  Ho- 
garth. 

Even  these  painters  do  not  show  the  unmistakable 
character  of  the  English  awakening  to  beauty  and  truth 
in  art  as  do  those  who  followed  them.  One  who  still 
thinks  of  the  English  character  as  hard,  material  and 
practical  should  study  the  landscapes  of  Constable  and 
Turner,  the  fairy  world  of  Edward  Burne-Jones,  the 
noble  symbolism  of  George  Frederick  Watts.  And 
when  he  does  this  he  will  see  that  the  painters  were 
revealing  on  canvas  the  same  new  and  fascinating 
vision  that  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  Shelley  and  Keats 
were  revealing  in  poetry.  That  is  to  say  the  spiritual 
life  of  the  English  people  was  undergoing  a  slow  but 
mighty  chanj^e  of  which  poets  and  painters  alike  were 
the  prophets. 

Moreover  the  appearance  of  a  new  sense  for  beauty 
was  paralleled  by  an  ethical  and  religious  awakening 
that  was  only  another  side  of  the  same  spiritual  trans- 
formation. In  1738  John  Wesley  was  "converted" 
in  a  Moravian  meeting  in  London.  "  It  is  scarcely 
an  exaggeration,"  says  W.  E.  K.  Lecky,  "  to  say  that 


THE   NEW   IDEALISM    IN    ENGLAND 


175 


the  scene  which  took  place  at  that  humble  meeting  in 
Aldersgate  Street  forms  an  epoch  in  English  history." 
At  once  he  began  with  the  aid  of  his  brother  Charles 
and  his  friend  George  Whitfield  the  revival  of  religion 
that  swept  over  England  with  amazing  speed  and 
power,  a  revival  as  fervent  as  Puritanism  but  infinitely 
more  gentle,  more  spiritual,  more  penetrated  with  the 
spirit  of  Christ.     And  at  least  two  of  Wesley's  con- 
temporaries achieved  works  that  embodied  the  faith 
preached  by  the  Methodist  apostles, —  John  Howard, 
the  pioneer  of  prison  reform,  and  William  Wilber- 
force,  the  first  great  crusader  against  slavery.     Wil- 
berforce  lived  to  see  the  abolition  of  the  slave  trade 
in  1807,  Howard  to  see  at  least  the  first  steps  taken 
toward  the  relief  of  the  unhappy  prisoners  of  English 
jails.     The   wave  of   social  progress   moves  slowly 
when  it  meets  the  stubborn  barrier  of  political  con- 
servatism and  of  privilege,  but  the  anti-slavery  and 
prison  reform  movements  of  the  nineteenth  century 
were  the  direct  outcome  of  the  work  of  these  two  men. 
The  new  altruism  extended  not  only  to  slaves  and  con- 
victs but  to  the  degraded  and  ignorant  of  other  lands 
and  to  animals.     Between  1792  and  181 3  were  founded 
the  Baptist  Missionary  Society,  the  London  Missionary 
Society,  the  Church  Missionary  Society  and  the  Wes- 
leyan  Methodist  Missionary  Society;  thousands  of  de- 
voted men  went  forth  to  carry  a  message  of  light  and 


1 


176  RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

redemption  to  the  darkest  corners  of  Africa,  Asia  and 
the  South  Seas ;  and  the  whole  spirit  of  the  Rime  of  the 
Ancient  Mariner  was  a  prophecy  of  the  movement  that 
took  visible  form  in  1824  in  the  Society  for  the  Preven- 
tion of  Cruelty  to  Animals. 

It  was  in  the  second  quarter  of  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury that  the  changed  attitude  ct    England  became 
most  clearly  and  positively  embodied  in  outward  acts. 
The  most  notable  of  these  were  no  doubt  the  removal 
of  religious  disabilities  in   1828-9,  the  abolition  of 
slavery,  the  laws  designed  to  protect  women  and  chil- 
dren from  cruel  and  destructive  factory  conditions,  the 
removal  of  restrictions  on  labor  combinations,  the  re- 
form of  the  criminal  laws,  the  repeal  of  the  corn  laws, 
and  the  concession  of  autonomy  to  the  colonies.     And 
this  slow  but  clearly  marked  progress  in  the  eflfort  to 
relieve  suffering,  to  remedy  abuses,  to  remove  laws, 
institutions  and  practices  that  involved  injustice  was 
accompanied  by  the  appearance  of  a  group  of  men  who 
gave  voice  to  the  new  aspirations,  powerful  preachers 
of  social  righteousness  like  Carlyle,  Ruskin  and  Wil- 
liam Morris,  like  Tennyson,  Browning  and  Matthew 

Arnold. 

There  is  no  better  single  illustration  of  the  new  ideal- 
ism in  English  thought  than  the  Sartor  Resartus  of 
Carlyle.  It  appeared  in  1831  and  was  received  with 
derision  by  British  Philistinism.     Its  apparently  inten- 


THE   NEW    IDEALISM    IN   ENGLAND 


177 


tional  incoherence,  its  frequent  lapses  into  an  impossi- 
ble jargon,  its  grotesqueness  of  plan  and  expression 
laid  it  open  to  limitless  ridicule.    Yet  it  was  an  educa- 
tive influence  in  Victorian  England  that  is  beyond  esti- 
mate.    Its  whole  point  is  the  assertion  that  the  things 
we  see  and  touch  are  only  garments,  half  revealing  and 
half  concealing  the  essential  realities.     Clothes,  cus- 
toms, creeds,  institutions,  governments,  words  them- 
selves, forms  of  all  kinds,  are  of  value  only  so  far  as 
they  express  spiritual  fact.     The  world  itself  is  but  the 
garment  of  God.    Our  human  weakness  forces  us  to 
use  forms,  and  the  forms  then  acquire  a  certain  sacred- 
ness  that  chokes  and  hinders  the  life  that  created  them. 
So  that  all  progress  consists  in  the  making  and  break- 
ing of  conventions  and  institutions.     We  must  make 
them  or  our  life  remains  chaotic  and  formless ;  we  must 
break  them  or  tuey  become  deadening  shells  and  bar- 
riers ;  and  our  only  salvation  throughout  lies  in  seeing 
the  form  as  forn,  the  shell  as  a  shell  —  never  confus- 
ing the  appearance  with  the  reality. 

This  thesis  is  stated  in  general  terms,  then  applied 
to  individual  life,  then  applied  to  soci-ity.  With  all 
its  grotesque  oddities  of  language  it  was  the  most 
brilliant  and  powerful  social  sermon  of  the  age. 
The  outworn  creeds  and  conventions  that  still  tried 
to  pose  as  necessities  to  law,  order,  religion  and 
respectabiUty  were  faced  and  swept  aside  in  the  Ever- 


1 1 

!  1 


ul   • 


r  ■ 


r 


'   1 


178  RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

lasting  Nay.  The  truths  that  were  emerging  from 
the  conventional  shell,  the  "  eternal  verities  "  were  ex- 
alted in  the  Everlasting  Yea.  Falsehood  and  shams 
were  denounced  as  eloquently  as  truth  and  realty  were 
asserted.  And  long  after  the  death  of  tV  cottish 
seer  himself  tens  of  thousands  of  the  you'  ^^r  men  of 
England  and  the  Empire  took  new  heart  and  glowed 
with  new  enthusiasm  as  they  seized  the  truth  in  the 
quaint  gospc ,  of  Clothes. 

Ruskin  and  Morris  served  in  the  same  way  as  the 
interpreters  of  beauty  and  labor.     Beauty  to  Ruskin 
was  no  longer  grace  and  symmetry  alone  but  the  perfect 
embodiment   of   truth    and   sincerity.     The   Modern 
Painters,  the  Seven  Lamps  of  Architecture,  the  chapter 
"  On  the  True  Nature  of  Gothic  "  in  Stones  of  Venice 
laid  down  a  standard  for  art  that  was  in  its  own  way 
as  fundamental  as  the  French  Revolution  in  the  field 
of  politics  or  the  Wealth  of  Nations  in  the  field  of  eco- 
nomics.    Art  that  was  merely  superficial,  art  for  art's 
sake,  art  that  represented  what  was  untrue,  insincere, 
sensual  or  trifling,  Ruskin  condemned  as  he  would  have 
condemned  the  same  things  m  literature  or  in  char- 
acter ;  false  painting  was  a  lie  as  truly  as  false  words, 
for  both  were  an  expression  of  the  human  soul.     So  as 
Carlyle  looked  beyond  the  convention,  the  institution 
or  the  creed  to  the  essential  and  living  spirit  that  gave 
them  their  value,  Ruskin  re-interpreted  beauty  in  terms 


1^ 


THE   NEW    IDEALISM    IN    ENGLAND 


179 


of  humanity  and  life.     And  he  took  the  same  standard 
for  all  products  of  labor  and  for  labor  itself. 

The  gospel  that  Ruskin  preached  William  Morris 
endeavored  to  practice.  Both  believed  that  ugliness  in 
a  building  or  any  work  of  human  hands  was  the  expres- 
sion of  evil.  So  Morris,  seeing  ugliness  everywhere 
about  him,  saw  behind  the  ugliness  the  English  soul 
cramped  and  misled,  working  in  darkness  and  degrada- 
tion, needing  to  be  redeemed  not  alone  by  political  free- 
dom but  by  beauty  —  the  beauty  that  was  defined  as 
the  expression  of  man's  joy  in  good  work,  not  to  be 
attained  unless  the  work  was  good  and  the  laborer 
happy  in  it.  This  teaching  Morris  tried  to  make  clear 
and  drive  home  by  putting  it  into  practice,  by  setting 
on  for-  a  reform  in  tVie  whole  outward  aspect  of  En- 
glisi  -  architecture,    painting,    furniture,    wall 

paper,  vci'cs  for  household  use  and  for  clothing,  and 
city  Streets.  And  the  movement  which  had  already 
found  expression  in  the  growth  of  landscape  architec- 
ture was  joined  to  an  immense  if  slow-moving  effort  to 
banish  ugliness,  to  relieve  the  sordidness  that  came 
from  ignorance  and  economic  pressure,  to  make  work  a 
joy  rather  than  a  curse,  and  to  extend  the  enthusiasm 
for  beauty,  sincerity,  spiritual  and  social  health  to  all 
strata  of  society.  It  is  impossible  to  estimate  the 
range  and  power  of  the  result.  The  goal  has  not  been 
reached;  the  pursuit  of  beauty  is  as  unending  as  the 


•■} 


l80         RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL  LIFE 

pursuit  of  truth;  but  the  impetus  given  by  Ruskin  and 
Morris  never  died  away.  The  new  social  gospel  found 
innumerable  disciples  whose  work  may  be  seen  in 
countless  cities,  houses,  factories  and  parks  all  over  the 
world.  Art  has  increasingly  become  not  the  luxury 
of  a  class  but  a  possession  of  the  whole  people. 

In  short,  the  last  century  has  seen  a  new  spiritual 
birth  of  the  English-speaking  peoples.    The  movement 
for  democracy  has  become  far  more  than  a  movement 
for  placing  the  sovereign  power  of  the  commonwealth 
in  the  hands  of  tht  masses.     It  has  broadened  into  an 
effort  not  only  to  free  the  people  from  the  domination 
of  a  monarch  or  a  class  but  to  break  the  chains  of 
ignorance,  of  ugliness,  of  falsehood,  of  cruelty  and  of 
passion.     The  political  struggles  of  the  past  have  be- 
come the  economic  struggles  of  the  present,  and  eco- 
nomic freedom  is  joined  to  spiritual  freedom.     The 
chains  of  the  spirit  are  harder  to  break  than  thechains 
of  feudalism  or  of  absolutism,  and  the  process  is  a  long 
one  because  prejudices  are  hard  to  break,  knowledge  is 
hard  to  acquire,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  see  the  way  to 
adjust  industrial  and  political  conditions  to  the  new 
ideal.     But  emancipation  is  going  on  nevertheless. 

England's  problem  of  reconstruction  is  therefore  not 
a  new  one :  it  is  the  same  problem  that  faced  her  before 
the  war,  and  the  war  has  been  only  n  exhausting  and 
tragic  but  stimulating  and  even  ennobling  episode  in 


|i    ■' 


THE   NEW    IDEALISM    IN    ENGLAND 


l8l 


the  long  struggle  toward  complete  social  freedom, 
toward  the  revision  of  her  forms  and  institutions  so 
that  they  may  better  embody  the  ideals  of  social  and 
spiritual  health.  The  student  who  wishes  to  see  the 
full  force  of  the  reconstructing  effort  may  find  it  in  the 
platform  adopted  by  the  Labor  Party,  in  the  last  Edu- 
cation Bill,  in  the  Ruskin  University,  and  in  every 
speech  of  Mr.  Lloyd-George  —  not  studied  separately 
but  in  relation  to  one  another.  We  shall  not  live  to 
see  the  reconstruction  completed;  England  moves 
slowly;  but  she  does  move,  with  her  ancient  caution 
but  with  her  ancient  tenacity,  making  sure  of  her  foot- 
hold before  taking  each  step  but  still  advancing  with 
more  courage  and  vision  than  of  old  because  the  goal 
is  more  clearly  in  sight  and  because  the  obstacles  are 
being  one  by  one  cleared  away. 


i        * 


AFTERWORD 


I*     * 


Nationalism  and  Internationalism 

Reconstruction  is  then  fundamentally  the  pro- 
gressive effort  to  put  into  form  the  changing  life  of 
society.     But  the  word  is  used  more  specifically  to  ex- 
press something  a  little  narrower  than  this.     In  ap- 
pearance at  any  rate  human  progress  is  not  an  even 
flow,  a  placid  evolution,  but  a  series  of  explosions 
alternating  with  periods  of  comparative  quiet,  and  no 
doubt  it  is  the  painful  and  difficult  effort  to  replace  the 
forms  broken  or  disturbed  by  the  explosions  that  has 
suggested  the  metaphor  implied  in  the  word  recon- 
struction.    With  such  an  interpretation  we  have  no 
quarrel.     For  it  is  of  course  true  that  a  great  crisis  or 
shock  involving  a  radical  change  in  the  social  outlook, 
whether  it  comes  as  a  paralyzing  disaster  or  as  an  in- 
vigorating stimulus,  will  naturally  involve  peculiarly 
difficult  problems  of  readjustment.     The  collapse  of 
the  Roman  Empire  in  the  west,  the  French  Revolution, 
the  Great  War  are  shocks  of  this  kind,  and  in  the  study 
of  history  they  are  the  dramatic  episodes,  the  ends  and 
the  beginnings  of  eras,  each  accompanied  and  followed 

182 


I    ' 


NATIONALISM    AND   INTERNATIONALISM 


183 


by  a  radical  rearrangement  of  social  perspective  and 
a  large  degree  of  external  change. 

But  the  crash  seldom  comes  unheralded,  nor  is  it 
different  in  kind  from  the  less  spectacular  crises  of 
every  day.    The  laws  of  change  and  growth  are  punc- 
tuated by  wars  and  revolutions,  perhaps,  but  not  inter- 
rupted by  them.     And  any  permanently  valid  recon- 
struction —  after  no  mattei   jow  great  or  small  a  crisis 
—  is  the  fruit  and  expression  of  national  life,  not  an 
original  scheme  worked  out  a  priori  in  the  brains  ct 
statesmen.     For  in  human  affairs  as  in  all  others  it  is 
normally  true,  in  spite  of  appearances,  that  nature  does 
not  move  in  leaps,  and  that  the  spectacular  character 
of  a  revolution,  a  victory  or  a  defeat,  hides  from  us 
but  does  not  nullify  the  steady,  orderlj  movement 
social  forces.     A  plan  of  reconstruction  that  ignot' 
these  permanent  things  in  national  life  is  an  effort  to 
paint  the  Ethiopian  white,  to  extra     rhe  flovs  /  from 
the  bulb.     "  Nature   can   be  commanded "   in   short 
"  only  by  being  obeyed." 

One  aspect  of  the  present  problem  is  of  transcendent 
importance.  Like  other  aspects  it  is  not  new,  even 
though  it  seems  new  because  seen  with  unprecedented 
clearness.  We  have  dwelt  on  the  fact  that  each  nation 
is  slowly  working  out  its  own  salvation,  making  its 
way  toward  its  own  goal.  But  profoundly  necessary 
as  it  is  to  realize  that  Italy,  Serbia,  France,  Russia  and 


184         RECONSTRUCTION    AND  NATIONAL   LIFE 

the  rest  must  be  considered  organic  units,  earnestly  as 
we  may  hope  that  nationality  and  state  boundaries  may 
be  made  to  coincide  so  that  national  progress  —  i.  e., 
progressive  destruction  of  outward  forms,  progressive 
reconstruction  of  the  nation  as  a  living  body  —  may  go 
on  unimpeded  by  deformity  and  disease,  yet  it  does  not 
follow  that  national  self-determination  must  mean  na- 
tional isolation.     Aristotle's  dictum  that  man  is  a  so- 
cial being,  that  individual  isolation  is  destructive  of 
individualism  itself,  had  a  corollary.     The  isolated  hu- 
man being  is,  no  doubt,  a  contradiction  in  terms.     But 
so  is  the  isolated  social  group.     To  separate  one's 
country  from  the  world  is  to  court  degeneracy  and 
death.     So  that  though  we  have  been  looking  specifi- 
cally at  the  national  groups  themselves,  seeing  their 
national  life  expressing  itself  in  a  never  ending  process 
of  readjustment,  we  must  as  we  close  add  the  reminder 
that  as  the  individual  finds  his  individualism  intensified 
and  enriched  in  society,  so  nationalism  is  intensified 
and  enriched  by  internationalism. 

It  might  be  inaccurate,  certainly  it  would  require 
careful  definition  of  terms,  to  describe  this  as  a  modern 
discovery.  But  it  is  at  least  true  to  say  that  the  age 
which  has  seen  so  tremendous  a  development  of  the 
principle  of  nationality  has  seen  also  a  steady,  though 
not  uniform  or  consistent,  development  of  conscious 
community  of    interest   between   nations.    And   the 


NATIONALISM    AND   INTERNATIONALISM         1 85 


I 


problem  has  been  to  give  this  a  wise  form  that  would 
ensure  growth  and  permanence  without  hampering  na- 
tional freedom.     So  stated,  the  difficulty  and  the  ideal 
alike  were  not  realized  until  the  horror  of  the  War 
cleared  men's  eyes.     But  when  the  idea  of  a  League 
emerged  it  was  seen  as  a  natural  and  even  obvious  cul- 
mination, not  as  a  new  device  to  meet  a  new  situation. 
Whether  the  spiritual  community  of  nations  is  aided 
materially  by  the  mixture  of  races  that  has  been  going 
on  from  time  immemorial  is  a  question.     Not  that  any 
one  would  dispute  its  value.     But  in  aiding  the  move- 
ment toward  the  breaking  down  of  national  antago- 
nisms the  "  melting  pot "  process  seems  to  have  a  very 
definite   limit.     The   more   thoroughly    fusion   takes 
place,  obviously,  the  more  entirely  does  the  new  na- 
tionality replace  that  of  parents  and  grandparents, 
with  no  apparent  lessening  of  such  prejudices,  narrow- 
ness or  aggressiveness  as  the  adopted  nation  may  pos- 
sess.    We  must  look  to  things  other  than  the  mere 
movement  of  population  for  the  building  of  interna- 
tional friendship  and  common  understanding. 

Yet  there  have  not  been  lacking  signs  that  nation- 
ality itself,  with  all  its  intensity  oi"  prejudice  and  fre- 
quent narrowness  of  patriotism,  has  carried  with  it 
the  seeds  of  internationalism,  seeds  slow-growing  but 
by  no  means  barren.  Again  and  again  during  the 
nineteenth  century  attempts  were  made  to  find  common 


I 


.  \ 


r 


I  ' 


, 


l86         RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

principles  on  which  all  western  peoples  could  agree. 
Of  these  the  Geneva  Convention  and  the  Hague  Con- 
ferences were  only  the  most  notable.     Even  the  meet- 
ings of  diplomats  and  statesmen,  even  the  attempts  at 
international  agreement  that  had  least  relation  to  the 
great  currents  of  national  life,  such  as  the  Congresses 
of  Vienna  and  Berlin  —  to  lake  the  two  examples  most 
discredited  now  by  the  wrongness  of  their  principles 
and  the  futility  of  their  results  —  were  signs  of  the 
times.     In  spite  of  selfish  and  superficial  diplomacy, 
in  spite  of  sadly  obvious  blunders  and  sins,  even  the 
most  crudely  external  conferences  of  the  last  hundred 
years  were  indications  of  a  movement  of  which  Met- 
ternich,  Disraeli  and  Bismarck  were  unconscious  par- 
takers and  which  had  in  it  a  mighty  surge  and  range 
that  never  came  within  their  vision. 

And  let  it  be  remembered  that  it  is  the  movement 
that  counts,  the  beneficent  spread  and  growing  power 
of  a  redeeming  conviction  and  aspiration,  rather  than 
any  definite  accomplishment.  We  cannot  judge  the 
value  of  the  international  conferences  solely  by  their 
visible  fruit.  Nor  can  we  regard  the  tentative  agree- 
ments reached  from  time  to  time  as  worthless  because 
of  the  lawlessness  of  the  past  six  years.  It  is  true 
that  the  Red  Cross  alone  would  justify  the  Geneva 
Convention,  that  the  International  Tribunal  alone 
would  justify  the  Conferences  of  1899  and  1907.     But 


NATIONALISM   AND   INTERNATIONALISM  187 

in  society  as  in  the  individual  the  definite,  tangible  act 
is  only  an  infinitesimal  part  of  the  total  life  current, 
the  part  that  comes  to  the  surface  and  may  be  sub- 
merged again  in  the  tempest  of  war.  Visible  signs  of 
progress,  welcome  as  they  are,  are  after  all  most  wel- 
come as  symbols  of  the  forces  that  produced  them,  and 
there  are  enough  of  them  to  point  the  line  of  advance. 
For  the  age  of  conventions  and  conferences  toward  the 
finding  of  common  principles  was  the  age  also  of  arbi- 
trations, of  the  rapid  building  of  a  still  tentative  but 
nevertheless  impressive  system  of  international  law, 
and  of  aie  clearing  away  of  international  differences 
by  friendly  negotiation.  The  single  fact  of  the  un- 
armed frontier  between  Canada  and  the  United  States, 
of  the  century  long  validity  of  the  agreement  of  181 7 
for  disarmament  on  the  Great  Lakes,  has  a  significance 
that  is  not  easily  measured. 

It  is  well  to  remember  too  that  movements  quite 
outside  of  formal  politics,  efforts  to  solve  problems 
common  to  all  nations  through  religious,  scientific  and 
social  cooperation,  have  a  far  from  unimportant  part 
in  the  same  progress.  Thus  the  earnest  and  even  pas- 
sionate advocacy  of  radical  schemes  of  social  recon- 
struction has  led  to  world  wide  organizations  for  the 
attainment  both  of  durable  peace  and  of  universal  jus- 
tice based  on  liberty.  Many  of  us  believe  that  the 
plans  and  ideals  of  the  Socialists  are  full  of  flaws. 


j8S 


RECONSTRUCTION   AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 


ill 


perhaps  even  fui;damentally  wrong.  But  their  specific 
platforms  and  doctrines  are  from  our  present  point 
of  view  matters  of  indifference.  They  may  embody 
truths,  fallacies,  or  bewildering  mixtures  of  true  and 
false.  But  in  any  case  they  represent  just  as  real  an 
effort  to  meet  a  problem  that  is  international  and  uni- 
versal as  a  congress  of  scientists  or  an  ecumenical 
synod. 

Nor  should  we  condemn  Socialism  for  its  failures 
any  more  than  for  questionable  doctrines.  The  fre- 
quent criticisms  of  socialist  internationalism  that  are 
based  on  the  participation  of  German  socialists  in  the 
war  are  hardly  just.  No  matter  how  keenly  an  indi- 
vidual may  feel  his  individualism  to  be  dependent  on 
society  there  must  come  times  when  he  will  find  it  nec- 
essary to  put  himself  in  opposition  to  this  or  that  form 
of  society  and  become  a  rebel.  Equally  is  it  true  that 
one  may  be  a  sincere  believer  in  international  socialism 
and  yet  bow  to  an  emergency  and  join  his  country  in 
armed  conflict  with  others,  even  when  he  is  far  from 
sure  that  in  that  particular  war  his  country  is  guiltless. 
Society,  we  repeat,  does  not  exclude  individualism,  nor 
does  internationalism  exclude  nationalism.  In  an  ideal 
state,  an  ideal  worid,  there  would  be  no  such  conflict 
of  interests  and  ideals.  But  too  often  in  human  af- 
fairs right  and  wrong  are  so  intermingled  and  hard  to 
discern  that  the  individual,  in  ignorance  and  puzzl"- 


NATIONALISM   AND   INTERNATIONALISM 


189 


ment,  has  to  drift  with  the  tide  or  make  a  judgment 
that  he  knows  is  fallible.  His  deepest  convictions 
may  even  be  swept  aside  bv  the  powerful  forces  of 
passion  and  prejudice,  as  a  man  struggling  with  temp- 
tation may  fall  time  and  again  in  the  battle  and  yet 
win  through  to  victory.  So  the  weakness  of  the  flesh, 
the  power  of  tradition  and  "  mob  psychology  "  must 
not  lead  us  to  scorn  of  the  ideal  or  too  much  sicepticism 
as  to  ultimate  ?chievement.  Socialists  have  been  in- 
consistent; some  of  them  have  proved  false  to  their 
principles;  but  the  miracle  of  universal  consistency  is 
not  to  be  demanded  as  a  test  of  value.  It  would  be 
hard  to  deduce  from  the  sins  of  Christians  the  futility 
of  the  New  Testament. 

Our  conclusion  then  is  clear.  Making  all  allow- 
ances for  blunders  and  sins,  remembering  that  social 
and  political  progress  is  inevitably  slow,  that  even  the 
best  human  ideals  are  obscured  by  ignorance,  weak- 
ness and  blindness,  there  is  yet  discernible  in  every 
nation  of  Europe  a  movement  toward  liberty,  justice, 
courage  in  the  search  for  truth,  and  altruism,  toward 
a  reconstruction  that  will  more  adequately  embody  the 
human  yearning  for  peace,  cooperation,  kindliness  and 
equal  opportunity.  Each  people  faces  the  problem 
with  a  temperament,  an  age-long  education,  an  environ- 
ment, a  social  structure  that  are  in  great  measure  pe- 
culiar to  itself.     And  so  deep-seated  are  these  national 


:\ 


(' 


r. 


i." 


190  RECONSTRUCTION    AND   NATIONAL   LIFE 

peculiarities  that  no  German  may  safely  dictate  to  a 
Frenchman,  no  Englishman  may  safely  dictate  to  a 
Russian,  what  should  be  the  next  step  forward. 

Yet  if  each  nation  must  face  its  own  problems  of 
reconstruction,  building  on  foundations  laid  in  past 
centuries,  we  may  still  welcome  the  signs  that  common 
grounds  of  universal  humanity  are  being  slowly  dis- 
covered, and  that  international  sympathy  bids  fair  to 
replace  international  antagonism.  The  League  of  Na- 
tions is  only  the  most  recent  step  in  a  noble  series.  It 
is  just  as  truly  related  to  preceding  efforts  as  each 
forward  movement  of  the  nations  in  their  solution  of 
individual  problems  of  politics  and  industry.  It  is 
just  as  truly  a  product  of  national  growth  as  the  demo- 
cratic state  is  the  product  of  the  individuals  composing 
it.  And  we  need  by  no  means  regard  it  as  final,  or 
scorn  it  if  it  should  prove  imperfect.  All  that  we 
should  ask  is  that  it  may  take  us  a  little  nearer  to  the 
light,  a  little  farther  from  the  darkness  of  the  cavern. 


THE  END 


INDEX 


Alexander  II,  Czar  of  Russia, 

96,  116-117 
Alsace-Lorraine,  6,  7,  15 
Anarchism  in  France,  49-50;  in 

Russia,  111-112,  131-132 
Arnold,  Matthew,  150,  167 
Australia,  10,  157 
Austria-Hungary,  5,8,  11 

Bakunin,  Michael,  107-108 

Balkans,  15 

Belgium,  15 

Berlin,  Congress  of,  186 

Bessarabia,  7 

Bismarck,  57 

Blanc,  Louis,  46-47 

Bolsheviki,  134-137 

Bosnia,  7 

Breshkovsky,  Catherine,  121 

Britain,  5,  6,  7;  reconstruction 

in,    163-164 
British  E.npire,  9-10,  151-162 
Bulgaria,  7 

Canada,  157 
Capitalism,  12,  86 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  176-78 
Carta,  Magna,  144-145 
Cezanne.  44-45 
Collectivism,  48 

Commons,    House  of,    144-147 
Communism,  87 
Constantinople,  o 


Danton,  38-39 
Decembrists,    115-116 
Democracy,  1-3,  7-9 
Denmark,  6 
Diderot,  38 
Dostoyevsky,  98,  lor 
Douma,  Imperial,  114,  127,  128; 
local,  116,  127 

Entile  of  Rousseau,  26-28 
England.  7;  liberties  of,   142- 
147;  idealism  in,  i68-i8i ;  re- 
lation of  with  ;reland,  151- 
157 
Expansion  of  Europe,  1-3,  9-12 

Factory  system,  12 

France,  5,  7,  9,  10;  art  in,  42- 

46;  education  in,  38-41 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  142,  146 
French  Revolution,  5,  14,  17-28, 

31-35.  37,  54;  reaction  of,  on 

Russia,  95 

Geneva  Convention,  186 
Germany.  4,  5,  7,  8,  10,  11 ;  char- 
acteristics of,  56-58,  62-74 
Gogol,  Nicolai,  loi 
Greece,  7 
Greuze,  42-3 


Hague  Conferences,  iP*^ 
Hapsburgs,  15 


191 


■is 


)  . 


h     t 


192 

Hanseatic  League,  62 
Herzen,  Alexander,  107-8 
Hogarth,  David,  173-4 
HohenzoUerns,  15 
House  of  Commons,  144-H7 
Howard,  John,  175 


INDEX 


'        » 


Idealism,  Platonic,  70-81 ;  Ger- 
man, 69-73.  83;  French,  72; 
English,  7^-3,  168-181;  Rus- 
sian, 13&-140 

Imperialism,  2,  10 

India,  i,  2,  158,  160-162 

Industrial  Revolution,  1.  2,  12, 
13 ;  in  Russia,  96 ;  in  France, 
46 

Internationalism,  184-190 

Ireland,  6,  7,  152-157 

Italy,  4.  5.  10-" 

Japan.  9 

John  Bull.  165.  166 

Kerensky,  114,  ITS,  I33 
Kropotkin,  Prince,  no,  :33 

Lassalle,  Ferdinand,  47,  86-88 
League  of  Nations,  185,  190 
Liberalism  in  Russia,  106,  115- 

116,  124-129 
Luther,  Martin,  62-67 

Magna  Carta,  144 
Marx,  Karl,  47,  86-88,  137 
Millet,  43-44 
Mir,  Russian,  121 
Morris,  William,  178-180 

Napoleon  Bonaparte,  17,  18,  28, 

33,  40.  60,  7Q.  80 
Nationality.  1-7 
Nihilism,   96,   102,   103-5,   "0- 

I",  "7 


Pan-Germanism,  15 
Pan-Slavism,  16 
Parliament,  British,  144-148 
Peter  the  Great,  94 
Philistinism,  British.  167 
Plato,  idealism  of,  70-71,  17a- 

171 
Poland,  6 

Pope,  Alexander,  169-170 
Protest  of  the  Cour  dts  Aides, 

21 
Prussia,  61,  62,  79-*3.  85 


Reformation.  German,  63 
Reform  Bill  of   1832.  148 
Revolution.       English.       145 ; 

French,  s.  I4,  17-28,  31-35.  37. 

54;  Russian,  15,  102-103,  106- 

108,  117,  118,  124 
Roumania,  7 
Rousseau.  18,  20,  23-28 
Rudin,   Dmitri,  as   a   Russian 

type.  99,  100 
Ruskin,  John,  178-180 
Russia,   I,  2,  8.  9;  compared 

with  western  Europe.  92-93, 

98;  liberation  of  serfs  in,  96, 

116;  territory  ard  population, 

119-121 


Sartor  Resartus.  176-178 
Schleswig,  6-7 
Serbia,  11 

Serfs,  emancipation  of,  96,  I16 
Shelley,  169-170 
Sinn  Fein,  154,  156 
Slavic  inertia,  98,  101-102,  loj 
Smith's  Wealth  of  Nations.  172 
Social  Contract,  14.  18,  22,  24, 
26 


INDEX 


193 


Socialism,  13,  187-189;  in 
France,  46-49;  >n  Germany, 
85-90;  in  Russia,  125,  129- 
139 

Sorel,  Georges,  S^-S^ 

State,  English  and  American 
theory  of,  76-77;  German 
theory  of.  "7 ;  as  an  organism, 
77-81 ;  as  Power,  82-84 

States  General,  17,  18.  20,  21 

Syndicalism  in  France,  49-53 


Trentino,  6 

Tripoli,  II 

Turgenev,  99,  100,  103-4,  121- 

122 
Turkey,  8 

Ulster,  154-156 
United  States,  10.  155 

Vienna,  Congress  of,  186 
Voltaire,  20,  22-23 


Terrorists  in  Russia,  106,  117- 

118 
Tolstoy,  loi,  140 
Treitschke,  82.  84 
Triple  Alliance,  11 


Watteau,  42 
Wesley,  John,  1/4-175 
Wilberforce,  William,  175 
Wordsworth,  172-173 

Zemstvos,  116 


\i 


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By  ISAAC  LIPPINCOTT 

Associate  Professor  of  Economics, 

Washington  University 


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*'  >om  an  industrial  point  of  view  the  nations  at  war 
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